Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

I Am Oz, the Great and Powerful!  Who Are You!

photog Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews

Tomorrow, I have an appointment to talk with a marketing expert.  Someone who gets paid to say how to market a book so that people will find it and want to buy it.  What are my expectations?  Surprisingly, I’m not expecting miracles.  What I’m hoping to do is learn what the limits and parameters are for this kind of service.

For instance, what is the reach of this business?  What is the specificity?  I’ve been led to believe by everything I’ve read that Amazon and Google can target ads to someone based on what they want to buy right now.  Well, okay so how much does it cost to target only those people?

Another thing I’m interested in is pricing.  Obviously the lower the price of something the more people will be willing to buy it.  So, there is probably an optimum price for maximizing profit.  But what if you want to maximize the number of people who read your book?  Is zero and option?  And is some minimum price just as good?

And I want to know if these experts are well-acquainted with right wing readers (my target audience).  After all, I’m not selling to the people who read “A Handmaid’s Tale” or “Woman on the Edge of Time.”  Those people would be rooting for my villains.  So, I want to know how specific they can get with the audience that they are reaching as potential readers.

Also, I want to know if they can tap into expert critical opinion to tell me ahead of time whether my story even has potential to interest a large audience or not.  They might be able to convince me that I’m attempting the impossible.  That piece of information alone would be extremely valuable to me.  I mean, sure, I’m just like every author.  I love my creation and think it worthy of an audience.  But maybe I’m very wrong.  Knowing that ahead of time could save me a lot of money and pain.

So, I’ll spend tomorrow collecting my thoughts and writing down questions to ask the “Wizard.”  One thing I’m interested in is how important a cover is.  Sure, a glossy cover with a sniper on a building above an Antifa riot would really hammer home the story better than just a text but what is the actual difference in sales?  Could I compensate by dropping the price to $0.99 for a few days or weeks to get word of mouth?  After all aren’t most books now e-books?  Do people need a cover when they’ll be reading the “book” on a Kindle?

And finally, I’m intrigued by the idea of running a Kickstarter to try and drum up funds and give the project visibility before the book is even up for sale.  I recently watched Larry Correia run a Kickstarter and he’s gotten $250,000 in advance sales.   Now I’m not kidding myself.  He’s got an enormous fan base already so there’s no comparison but still, the “GoFundMe” site has high visibility for whomever uses it.  So, I’ll ask about that too (even though I think I know what the answer will be).

So that’s what my Thursday looks like.  Maybe after tomorrow I’ll have a new perspective on selling my book.  Or maybe I’ll be even more confused than ever.

A Respite.  What’s Not to Love?

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Another day, another mass killing in a church.  Okay we need a break today.  Need something that won’t push me over the edge into catatonia.  Let’s see.

So, Camera Girl and I went to a gathering of my weekly zoom-call buddies.  It was a rescheduled Labor Day party that was cancelled because of weather, I think.  Our host had a pork roast in a smoker and other delicacies.  Camera Girl baked a ricotta cheesecake and some other stuff and we relaxed around a giant fire pit in a cauldron hung from a heavy chain attached to a tripod.  We ate and socialized.  There was a lot of talk about music.  Our host is a musician.  He’s a singer and guitar player and after dinner he set up a band and played country favorites and some eclectic tunes along with songs of his own.  The audience was very appreciative as well they should have been.  It was very enjoyable.

Afterward there was some political discussion amongst a few of us but my heart wasn’t into it.  It was much more enjoyable to discuss the merits of and differences between Hank Williams Senior, Junior and the III.  And talk about who really played the instruments on the Beach Boys, “Pet Sounds” (apparently studio musicians called, “The Wrecking Crew”).  Sure, we did talk a little about Charlie Kirk’s murder, but I much preferred spending time talking about the old days and some of the characters who we worked with but hadn’t thought about in a long time.  Reminiscing actually is a lot of fun.  And there were people there I hadn’t seen in a long time.  And everyone got along great.  And I did hear some very good health news about someone who had had a terrible accident.  So, all in all, it was an excellent night.

But all too soon Camera Girl reminded me I needed to head home and we said our goodbyes.  But when I got home, I was inspired by the musical nature of the night to dig out a bunch of CDs that I had bought but never ripped onto my computer and put on some thumb drives to listen to in my car and around the house.  You see I’ve never gone in for streaming.  I don’t use a cell phone at all (well, I have a flip phone that I charge up if I have to go out of town).  So, my music is based on my CD collection.  Well, I had about ten albums that I hadn’t heard in a few years so I added them to the playlist and damn!  All of a sudden, my music was light years better than it’s been in forever.  So, ignoring the present apocalypse has been very pleasant.  Sure, I’ll have to come up for air soon and the horror is just waiting for me to come back to the surface but for a short exciting moment I was living in a happier world without trans-psycho-killers, Antifa losers and government shutdowns.  What’s not to love?

Another Psycho-Killer, Another Book Lesson

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Another day, another psycho leftist shooter.  As I said the other day, be prepared for an almost endless sequence of these suicidal people.  Their lives are a misery to them so they want the rest of us to suffer too.  Only in addition to everything else that was wrong with this guy he even failed to accomplish what he set out to do.  He wanted to kill ICE agents and instead he killed and wounded illegal alien detainees that were in an ICE van.  Now that level of incompetence and stupidity really does deserve the Darwin Award.  And right there with the shooter’s idiocy, the Left is trying, once again, and to no effect, to question whether the shooter was a Leftist.  Well, give it a day or two and they’ll settle for, “He wasn’t a card-carrying member of a terrorist left-wing organization, which is another way of saying these organizations don’t have cards.  Their badges are the crazed looks on their faces and the social media memes and buzzwords of the left.

Well, enough of that.

Some of the results from the beta-readers of my novel are coming in and the consensus is that this guy photog must be out of his mind if he thinks anyone is gonna read his awful book.  As reader after reader disparaged its characters, plots and even adverbs I was like a cornered wild animal looking for some way to escape the tsunami of negative results.  I yelled, “Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!”  Well, maybe there weren’t that many exclamation points in real life.  But I was pretty busted up.  So, I took a bottle of Tylenol and washed it down with a gallon of grape Hawaiian Punch and pretty soon I was really sick.  But that took my mind off my book problems while I headed to urgent care.  Now that I’ve mostly recovered, I’m happily in denial and working on an alternate reality where I’ve sold more books than James Patterson and am twice as handsome as Brad Pitt but somehow it turned out backwards.  I’m unfortunately, twice as handsome as James Patterson and have sold more books than Brad Pitt.  You know it really is important to work these things out ahead of time.

I have an appointment to talk with a marketer who specializes in self-published books and I’m trying to put together a list of questions to ask.  At the moment all that comes to mind is, “How can I become fabulously wealthy from my book without putting in any effort at all?”  And I think I’ve nailed it.  That is exactly what I want an answer to.  But I have this nagging suspicion that there may be more to it than that.  I seem to be confusing marketer with the genie from Aladdin.  Well, you can hardly blame me.  Both of them are in my mind, mythical creatures with supernatural powers.  But seriously, this whole book thing has been an interesting experience.  I’ve learned that writing is a craft that requires lots of work and especially in the planning stages.  Writing a story by the seat of your pants seems more intuitive and natural to me but I now understand that building the story ahead of time saves time at the end when re-writing is extremely painful and maybe impractical.  Well, the journey continues.

Now Where’s My Coffee?!!!

photog Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

While I sent out copies of my book to somewhat willing beta-readers I remembered I had some projects kicking around the house.  When I mentioned this, Camera Girl informed me that I had failed as a maintenance manager.  She handed me the contact information of the last plumber we had used (quite a while ago) and reminded me that we now had three plumbing issues that needed to be attended to.  These problems had been haunting her sense of propriety for a good long while and now righteous anger had welled up and I was the malefactor who should have taken matters into my own hands long ago, “Call him today!  It’ll take a week to get him here so get this done before we’re too busy in a couple of weeks.”  I nodded my head in bitter remembrance.  She was right.  There was a water line on one of the toilet tanks that leaked when it was flushed.  There was a shower drain on the first floor that had a plate that had no screw holding it down but was welded tight and she was afraid it was clogged based on some comments she had heard from the kids during the summer pool season when they used that shower after swimming.  And finally, there was that sink basin that had a crack in the porcelain that leaked.

Each problem separately was minor and ignorable for at least the medium term.  But taken together they spoke of dereliction of duty, mopery and dopery, flimflammery and bone-laziness.  I was contrite.  I mumbled my assent.  And she left to go about her litany of errands.  She had to buy crickets for the two preying mantises that she had captured this week.  She wanted to save them from the approaching cold weather.  And also, to see if they would produce egg sacs for next year.  And she had various other duties; packages for the post office, books and movies to the library, a jigsaw puzzle for a friend of hers and some miscellaneous goods to buy at Wallymart.  Each one of these multitasked errands added to the indictment of my malfeasance.

So, I sat down and tried to put down on paper the plumbing work I wanted done.  After all you don’t call a tradesman and ask him to spend expensive time without trying to minimize the cost by defining the work.  First off there was the leaking water line on the toilet.  It was one of those somewhat flexible stainless lines.  Where it met the valve near the floor it was rusted from the dripping water it created.  But was it dripping from the toilet connection or the valve fitting.  And I realized I had never even bothered to decide which problem it was.  If it was leaking from downstream of the valve, maybe I could buy a new piece of flexible line and replace it beyond the shutoff valve.

So, I went upstairs and looked at the line.  It was dry.  So, I flushed the toilet and I saw drops of water flowing down from the toilet to the floor.  Now I was interested.  I kneeled down and twisted around and I could see a plastic fitting at the toilet tank.  There was a threaded nut.  So, I tried to hand tighten it.  It gave a little so I tightened as hard as I could by hand.  I dried off the line and flushed the toilet.  No water.  I flushed it again.  No water.  I flushed it a third time.  No water.  Hail the conquering hero!

I went down to the bottom floor and looked at the shower drain.  Sure enough, the drain plate had no screw but was tight to the orifice.  I stared at it for a few seconds and pulled on the plate as hard as I could and it popped off. There was some debris in it so I got my pliers and pulled out some hair and muck.  Then I ran the shower full blast for ten minutes.  No water backing up.  Now I was a veritable demigod of home improvement.

I marched up to the cracked sink with an air of bored confidence and examined the piping connections.  Sure enough, there was a plastic threaded coupling connecting it to the piping and almost nothing else in the way from removing it from the countertop.  With a look of contempt, I walked over to the contact information with half a mind to call up this tradesman and inform him that his services would not be needed.

When Camera Girl returned, I straightened her out on the status of her honey-do list.  “Items one and two solved!  Item three has been surveyed, a path forward has been devised and the schedule is already in place.  Now where’s my coffee?!!!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

photog Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , ,

Update:

To verify my ownership of “The Sniper” for the Royal Road folks, I am adding this note to show I also control Orion’s Cold Fire.

 

We interrupt the daily progression of actual civil war to bring you a message about a fictional civil war story.  I’ve finished the manuscript for my book, “The Sniper.”  Now I’m looking for beta readers.  I’m looking for folks to read the book and give me their honest feedback.  Also I’d like to disseminate the book to friends and family who you judge would be a good fit for the book based on your estimation and if they agree to read it I’d like to get their opinions too.

I’m looking to get this book out to the largest group of people possible to see whether it is something that people will want to read.  So after reading it if you think it’s appropriate for people you know let me hear that too.  And remember, I’m not a fragile author.  If you think it sucks, say so, but also tell me why you think it.

If you’re interested leave a comment to that effect and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the story.  Now this is just a pdf.  No nice cover, no actual paper.  Just electrons.  But I will guarantee that this sniper is nothing like the actual sniper we’ve had to hear about for the last week.

And just to remind you here’s the beginning of the book.

 

Chapter 1 – An Object Lesson

Joseph Boghadair was set up at a loophole in a small prefabricated metal building at the top of the mountain that contained the Icarus Mine.  His .50 caliber sniper rifle was trained on the narrow road that led up to the mine.  He could see a line of black SUVs about a mile and a half down the road and he was getting ready to start firing on the convoy.  His first shots took out the engine of the lead vehicle thereby halting the convoy.  His second volley took out the engine of the last car in line thus trapping the rest of the vehicles between.  Then at a more leisurely pace he took care of the other eight vehicles.  By this point the passengers were crouching behind their disabled cars and randomly firing handguns and automatic weapons in Joseph’s general direction with almost no discernible results.

After about half an hour a few of the men in black body armor attempted to reach a stand of trees about 300 yards away to their left.  Joseph put a few well aimed rounds in front of their path and they quickly retreated back to the supposed safety of their not-so-mobile-autos.  Joseph snorted wryly at their shyness.

An hour after that a helicopter approached the mountain from the opposite direction to Joseph’s loophole.  Walking over to a window on the other wall he could see a distant Blackhawk approaching at relatively high altitude.  Joseph then began his preparations for their reception.

Between crew and troops, the Blackhawk had a dozen men on board.  And more importantly it had a couple of Hellfire missiles.  From a very safe distance away it targeted Joseph’s position and fired.  The missile struck precisely on target and obliterated the steel structure almost completely.  All that remained was the foundation of the structure around the mine shaft, now clogged with debris.

The Blackhawk landed about three quarters of a mile from the mine entrance.  At this point the agents, hunkered down behind their vehicles, began to stream toward the helicopter.  By the time they reached the aircraft the troops had exited and were waiting for their rescued brethren to arrive.

FBI Special Agent in Charge, George Chastain assembled both teams and briefed them on the updated mission plan.  “We will proceed to the mine head and look for any human remains.  We will collect whatever we can retrieve for lab analysis and attempt to seal the mine head until qualified personnel can be assembled for recovery operations.  It is presumed that the target, Joseph Boghadair was killed by the missile strike but we will take no chances.  He was an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached by anyone without backup and prior approval from leadership.  In addition to his war record it is believed that Boghadair is responsible for the shooting deaths of forty-six people in the last six months with thirteen of those people being FBI personnel.  No one enters the mine until remote sensing equipment is brought in.  Alright, proceed.”

The agents formed two groups.  Apparently, SUV agents and helicopter agents must not bond very well.  But before they were more than a hundred feet from the helicopter the ground began to quake so powerfully beneath them that they were irresistibly knocked off their feet.  And while they were clawing at the ground for dear life, they could see that the high ground where the mine head was located had collapsed into the earth.  The roar of that collapse was more frightening than the initial earthquake and some of the agents hid their heads under their arms in abject terror.  When the mountain stopped shaking the men started to collect themselves and stand up.  When they looked around them, they were astonished.  A circular pit had opened up centered on the mine head.  It was a thousand yards in diameter and so deep that only blackness could be seen at its center.  Several cracks had formed outside the circular pit.  One of these had nearly swallowed the Blackhawk.  It was on its side and half buried in the crevice.  Its rotors were fractured and it wouldn’t be flying away from this landing.

Chastain went over to the edge of the crater and just stared down into the blackness below.  Then he went back to his team and started giving orders to begin a retreat from the stricken mountain.  He was trying to think of what he was going to tell his boss.  Nothing reasonable came to mind.

Ending the Woke Madness

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I’m just plain disgusted with humanity today.  We’ve reached a very low point.  The fact that this kid Robinson could come from a good family in a very conservative area and still end up as a far-left psycho involved with a “transgender woman” and at twenty-two years old assassinate someone so that he has ended his own life either literally or effectively, sickens me.  The world has become insane.

What seems apparent is that colleges have now become leftist indoctrination centers.  And the only way out is to set up a network of normal colleges to act as an alternative in order to protect young minds from this poison.  I think that’s the only thing that can be done.

As for those who have already been brainwashed, I think it’s too late for them.  I don’t think there is a “deprogramming” protocol that will work.  Somehow, we will need to protect ourselves from these rabid individuals and find ways to interact with only the normal.  I haven’t thought this stuff out deeply.  It’s just my visceral reaction to what has gone on this week.  But I think it’s important to continue the government program to defund all institutions of higher education that indulge in DEI.  But more than that it’s time to stop funding colleges that have disciplines like Queer Studies.  If a college decides that this is meaningful education for young people then it should find its own money to fund it.  And that goes for any “study” that is essentially a grievance group complaining about the United States or “whiteness” or any other woke hatred subject.

A society, no matter how freedom-loving has to have limits to freedom.  We already draw the line at pedophilia.  I think we’re going to need to revisit the way we look at deviant sexuality in general.  If it is thrown back to the states that should be enough for now.  This will allow certain areas of the country to reestablish normalcy as an operating principle.  And if there are places for deviants to go to practice their sexual preferences like the West Coast and the Northeast then there shouldn’t be a problem deporting these people from the other areas of the country.  That would seem to be a humane way to remove them from the environment.  Win/win.

As I said, I’m pretty disgusted with the current situation in our country (and globally).  It’s going to take a lot of work to make much of an improvement on the current sorry state.  I guess the real first step will be for the Justice Department to uproot Antifa.  That all by itself will be enormously difficult.  But it is such an important job that we should be able to tell very soon whether it’s being tackled or not.  My way to measure whether anything is being done will be whether co-conspirators are named in the Charlie Kirk assassination.    From what I’ve heard there were many people aware beforehand that this murder was scheduled.  It is the Justice Department’s duty to find these people, prove their involvement and indict them for murder.

If that does not happen, things will not improve.

Exaggerations of the Simple Stuff of Human Life

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Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.”

And Macbeth enters.  What a marvelous scene.  Witches, bloody ghosts and a demigod truly drained of his humanity.  A horror story in a stage play.  And then Ray Bradbury takes that line, “Something wicked this way comes” and makes it the title of his own American ghost story; the story of a haunted carnival.  Now what does Macbeth have to do with Bradbury?  Well, in both cases we have basically good people seduced by the devil.  Whether it’s Shakespeare’s witches or Bradbury’s Mr. Dark it is the story of men succumbing to the devil’s promise for their heart’s desire in exchange for their souls.

Macbeth wants the Scottish crown.  Bradbury’s Green Town denizens want various things.  Tom Fury and Mr. Crosetti succumb to lust.  Mr. Tetley wants money.  Miss Foley and Charles Halloway want their youth back.  Jim Nightshade wants to be older so he can indulge his various negative desires.  And for these things they risk becoming permanent prisoners of Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger’s haunted carnival travelling the American continent in search of more souls to consume.

What a marvelous conceit.  An ancient locomotive from the Civil War era, arrives in small towns in the middle of the night and sniffs out the spiritually wounded inhabitants and lures them into the haunted attractions of the show.  If they wander into the house of mirrors, they will see their heart’s desire or their greatest fear.  Or they can follow the barker’s lure and enter the tent where the belly dancers expose their bodies for a silver dime.  And those that disappear are no longer recognizable as themselves and so cannot be rescued by any police force.

And redemption can only be had in Bradbury’s story if the devil is laughed out of town.  Laughter and happiness are the only cures for this evil.  The secret is to realize that life is not a tragedy.  Even at its worst, it is better than the alternative which is nothingness.  Pain and sadness and even death are a human story and in fact the only certainty in this world.  But it’s also still better than never existing.  Because no matter how sad and awful our existence, it’s still ours.  We get to feel it and react to it and maybe win a few rounds before we’re finally cornered and beaten by death.

So, the ride’s the thing.  That’s the lesson that Charles Halloway learns by the end of the story.  Even though he’s old and overwhelmed with trying to be the father of a young boy, that overwhelming challenge is his greatest opportunity to squeeze every bit of meaning and gusto out of what remains of his life.  And the boys get to see that fears and desires are exaggerations of the simple stuff of human life.  Lust and greed and fear are just the ingredients of life taken out of balance from their normal proportions and occasions.

I wonder who will take this theme up next?  Maybe I will, someday.

Grammata-Euphoria

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All this Charlie Kirk media madness and the manhunt have depressed the hell out of me.  We live in a madhouse surrounded by awful, depraved people.  So I needed a break.  So I’m writing about something lighthearted instead.  My apologies.  I’m sure on Friday more horrible things will occur to drag me back into the madhouse.

Publishing a book.

Step two complete!  I sent off my manuscript to the one traditional publisher that I’m confident isn’t ideologically opposed to the political position of my protagonist.  Now I’ve got to write a “query letter” and send it out to a bunch of agents to see if any want to represent me.  And I have to make a list of publishers that will take submissions without agents.  Once I’ve done all that, if no one bites then I have to self-publish it and then I have to market it (advertise, announce it on social media, run a Kickstarter, hire a skywriter to put my message over Manhattan, and get a Superbowl commercial).

Well anyway, that will keep me busy for a while.  Based on all the advice for new writers that I’ve read, I intend to disseminate my story for free to all of my friends and try to get as much good word of mouth and favorable reviews as I can when it’s ready to launch.  After all, I don’t want hundreds or thousand of readers and dollars.  I need millions and billions!  Like the holy texts, my book should be in every home in the first and second world.  And dammit why not the third world too?  Surely, I can squeeze the little bit of hard currency that they would normally buy food with and divert it into my coffers.  Yes, yes.  That sounds right.

Well anyway Larry Correia started a monthlong Kickstarter for his new book on Ark Press and within about 24 hours he had $150,000 collected.  And what has he got that I haven’t got (beside thousands of devoted fans)?  Unfortunately, that is exactly what he has that I don’t.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of the unknown author.  There should be a “Tomb of the Unknown Author.”  It could be right past the colonnade of heroic sculptures of Homer, Moses and whoever wrote George Burns’ jokes.  It should have an eternal flame that’s a large hibachi using charcoal brickettes as fuel.  Some residue and aroma from a nice porterhouse steak would be fine and possibly a meat thermometer somewhere nearby.

You know I did learn that writing a story really is just for yourself.  I found parts of the work where I said, “Now that’s exactly how it should be.  Dammit, the writer nailed this perfectly.”  And of course, I know I’m talking to myself but it’s immensely satisfying when the words evoke exactly the emotion you’re reaching for.

Of course, the tricky part is knowing (or hoping) that the scene will elicit that same response from someone or better still, many someone-s who will let the world know just what a genius the author is.  I guess the definition of a great writer is when the whole world (mostly) is moved by what you write in the way you wanted them to feel.

Alright, that’s enough grammata-euphoria.  I’ll only report back when something interesting (publication or a book deal) is imminent.  Until then we can concentrate on the latest hideous atrocities on the streets of our cities and Trump’s latest poke in the eye to the Left and its minions.

Bogita!

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A good friend of the site kindly put me in touch with a published author this week and I had a very edifying and encouraging discussion.  He provided me with the kind of practical advice that I’ve been looking for.  And it’s not that his information differed from some of the things I’ve been reading but rather that he provided reinforcement for some of the things I had been leaning toward but agonizing about.  I will take a page from Camera Girl’s book and as she famously said (and as she claims Nike plagiarized her by saying), “Just do it!”

So, I spent a couple of hours doing a clean up of a copy of the manuscript that I want to send out to a medium sized publishing house that I know is friendly to folks of my political and cultural leanings.  Who knew that em-dashes are not welcome everywhere?  Well potato/puhtatah.  When in Rome do as the Romans do.  Tippecanoe and Tyler too, I guess.

Yes, I’m now on the manic climb of the manic/depressive roller coaster and all things are possible and everything is easy.  Soon I’ll be crashing down into the abyss of hopelessness and despair.  Well …, actually not.  There’s a medicine in actually finishing anything.  The whole “beginning, middle and end” thing is not just a concept.  It’s a part of human nature and there is salvation in typing that last word and hitting the period key. Bang!

So, tomorrow is work and maybe more work.  There are new systems at work that have to be learned and used.  And people to train and all kinds of boring and stupid things to do.  But even that doesn’t daunt me right now.  So, I’m looking ahead to sending the manuscript out in the next few days and then I’ll see if there are any agents that I might want to contact.  For that I’ll have to put together a query letter which sounds like a goofy thing.  It’s a kind of sales pitch to inspire the agent to want to handle your book in discussions with publishers.  I imagine Don Draper of Mad Men standing up at a blackboard pointing at a sketch of something inspirational and gesticulating wildly while saying incredibly persuasive things about my creative genius.

But from what I’ve heard it won’t be Don Draper because most agents, editors, publishers and probably everyone else in the publishing business are all women.  And probably not fun women like Camera Girl who has a great sense of humor (most of the time) but serious and really annoying women who say “they and them” instead of “she and her.”  Well, what can you do?  The world is made up of all kinds of folks and as that famous philosopher Rodney King once asked, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  So, I must do my best to struggle and survive regardless of my instincts and early training.  I will put on my best smile and put my best foot forward and step into the future.  But no matter what, there will be no girl-boss in “The Sniper.”  Bogey cannot be Bogita!

We Have to Change with Them

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I watched a YouTube video that described how a book that was struggling to sell a few hundred copies suddenly caught fire and ended up selling 1.5 million copies.  Well, the secret was that they gave away 150,000 copies of the book for free.  And then enough of those readers loved it that they got their friends excited enough to buy it.

Now I’ll have to say, on the face of it, this sounds insane.  I’m not even sure how you would go about giving away 150,000 copies of a book.  I guess you’d set the price to zero on Amazon and then e-mail 150,000 people to let them know they can have the book free that week or something.  But where do you even get an e-mail list with 150,000 science fiction fans?  But then again, I have read a lot in the last few weeks about how even traditionally published books mostly only sell a few hundred copies altogether.  That can’t be considered success, can it?

This has really got me thinking about how limited my little world of friends and family is in the larger scheme of things.  Even on the web I only communicate with a few hundred or maybe a few thousand people at most.  I guess these proverbial “influencers” may have a reach that extends into the hundreds of thousands and possibly a few million people but I’m not sure how much this translates into marketability.  Of course, I don’t discount the youth market and how suggestible teenagers are.  But that’s not a market that I’m currently interested in.

But it was fun thinking about my book reaching millions of people.  Hordes of adoring fans lining up on the highways leading to Dunwich all with the single fixed idea of having me sign their personal copy of “The Sniper” so that it would become an heirloom that they could pass down to their children and their children’s children unto the eighth generation.

It kinda gets you, … right there.

Well, anyway, I definitely have a lot to think about in anticipation of actually publishing this magnum opus.  I still think I’ll look at traditional publishing first because that is the traditional thing.  And I am a traditional guy.  But it’s tempting to think of trying to break out into the big bold beautiful world out there and get as much feedback from the readers out there as I possibly can.  After all P.T. Barnum was successful because he knew how to catch the public’s attention.  Possibly a lurid cover that has little to do with the plot of the book may be part of how you attract the great unwashed.  Then again, covers cost money and maybe I’m better off spending that on a huge e-mail list of science fiction fans.

So, as you can tell I’m staring out into the abyss and finding it abysmal.  When I was a young fan of science fiction, I assumed that finding readers was not a problem.  I thought getting published was the trick.  Times change, priorities shift and we have to change with them.