A bit early for my birthday, but last night after I got home from our trip out west and spent appropriate time petting the pets, I got around to checking the stats on my novel. And saw that while I was gone, we crossed 25,000 total downloads of the book.
As I noted two years ago when the downloads crossed the 10,000 mark, that’s kinda cool. And I am likewise pleased that the book seems to be maintaining its popularity.
So, thanks to one and all for helping to spread the word. With a little luck, I’ll have some more information soon about the actual publication date to share.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Guns, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
As I have done for the last couple of years, I like to look at the stats for my sites on New Years Day – numbers don’t lie.
But they can be a bit confusing. Here’s how. In 2009, I could say that 9,619 people downloaded some or all of Communion of Dreams. That would break down as 5,877 downloads of the original “complete” .pdf of the book, 156 copies of the revised version, 3,183 of the first mp3, and 403 copies of the first chapter. Or I could say that there were a total of 6,765 downloads, using the numbers for the “complete” .pdfs plus the minimum downloads of both the mp3 and individual chapter files (on the theory that those numbers reflect “complete” downloads of the book in those formats.) For my year-end numbers in the past I have used the latter formula, and I will do so again.
So, 2009 had 6,765 downloads. That compares to 6,288 in 2007, and 6,182 in 2008. How many people have actually read the book, I have no idea – I have heard from people that they have passed on the .pdf they downloaded to friends, and others have told me that they printed the thing out and gave copies to others. So that would boost the numbers. Then again, just because someone downloaded the thing, doesn’t mean they read it. Lord knows I have plenty of books I own but have never gotten around to reading.
Which brings up another item – back in August I mentioned that I was working on a revision because there was a publisher who was interested in the book. In November I mentioned that I had submitted the manuscript with the revisions, and was waiting for them to take another look at it. Well, I’m still waiting, though the publisher said that he was going to assign it to one of their readers and go through it himself, and would get back to me soon. I’m not complaining about the wait – six weeks or so is not at all unreasonable – but I do wonder whether he just didn’t want to give me the bad news leading up to the holidays. So, we’ll see what comes of that.
I’m also in a “wait and see” mode on my two other writing projects. My co-author on the caregiving book Her Final Year still has to finish his editing before we can proceed with that, and I haven’t had a chance to get together with my sister to really get started on My Father’s Gun. But now that the end of the year is past, I hope to make progress on both of those soon.
Other aspects of life in 2009? A mix. I did get a lot of good conservation work done, though losing the one big client in the fall due to the economy hurt a lot – I have other work, but nowhere near as much, so that has hindered my efforts to resolve long standing debt leftover from the gallery. My health is better than it was a year ago, but I still need to lose several stones. The BBTI project was a huge success through 2009, and I’m sure will continue to be a source both of work and pleasure in the coming year. Otherwise, well, if you read this blog you probably already have had your fill of my introspection.
So, goodbye 2009, and best wishes to one and all for a better 2010.
Jim Downey
Or 1-800-Lotta-Posts.
Yup, this is post #800. And since I’ve gone this far, I should at least see it to 910.
OK, I’m in a bit of a silly mood. Blame it on the big muckin’ storm rolling our way.
Anyway, 800 posts. It’s been 6 months since the last big round number, so it looks like I have slowed down some in my posting, but not a lot. Since then, there have been another 12,000 hits to this blog, and about 5,000 more downloads of the novel. I’ll have a final tally on the year after the 1st, but it looks like things have picked up a bit overall in 2009.
Have a Merry Christmas, everyone. Be safe if you have to travel. And try not to let the family drive you nuts.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Failure, Guns, Humor, Marketing, Music, RKBA, Society, Survival, Violence
When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong,
give a little whistle!
Taking the old song lyrics to heart, if inverting the intent a bit, police in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park have come up with a cunning plan to thwart crime:
Oak Park crime: Police pass out whistles to help residents fight back
Jump in burglaries and robberies prompts giveaway
Thousands of Oak Park residents are being equipped with a simple device to help fight crime in the village.
Police are passing out whistles that they are urging citizens to blow if they are victims of or witnesses to a crime.
Officers distributed hundreds of the shiny whistles at two stations along the CTA’s Green Line in Oak Park on Friday and will be passing out more Wednesday along the Blue Line. Giveaways elsewhere are expected to take place in the weeks ahead.
“We think they are going to go quick,” said Oak Park Police Cmdr. Keenan Williams.
The village conducted a similar program in the 1980s, and Police Chief Rick Tanksley earlier this year suggested bringing it back after statistics showed that burglaries and robberies were on the rise.
I’m sure that criminals will now flee Oak Park, in the face of this devastating new crime-fighting tool. I mean, they might actually have their hearing damaged, should a brave citizen use their police-issued whistle. And based on previous experience, and the complete eradication of crime in Oak Park following the last time this tactic was used . . .
. . . wait, what’s that? You mean crime wasn’t eliminated in Oak Park by the whistles last time? Huh. Maybe that would explain why this brilliant program hasn’t been put into effect in cities around the country.
Then why do it? Well, here’s another small bit from the Tribune article:
The village had about 3,000 whistles delivered at a cost of about 50 cents each, he said. The cost was paid by Community Bank, whose logo is on the side of each whistle.
I mean, I hate to be cynical or anything, especially this time of year, but it sure seems like nothing but an advertising gimmick to me. One backed by the boys in blue. I wonder who in the city government got what kind of special favor for that little trick?
Now, in all honesty, I do actually carry a whistle with me. No kidding. But when it comes to wanting a defense against crime, I’d prefer one of my concealed-carry pistols.
Except, of course, that that isn’t allowed in Illinois. Hmm.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Art, Ballistics, Guns, Humor, Marketing, Podcast, Promotion, RKBA, SCA
Had an interview last night, about the Ballistics By The Inch project, with the fellow who does the “Gun Nation” podcasts that are quite popular. Sent this humorous bit to a friend about it last night after it was over:
Funny bit to share from the interview this evening…
So, it was for a podcast this guy does about gun stuff. It’s a good podcast. The guy is a bit of a nerd, materials science researcher involved in working on the next generation of ballistic cloth (Kevlar, et cetera), but he does his show for a general audience. Anyway, he *loves* our project, and has been a bit nuts about wanting to do an interview for about six months, but one thing and another always kept getting in the way. But it finally worked out that we both had the free time to do it, at the same time.
We get to do the interview, about 45 minutes by phone (Skype, actually), of which he’ll probably use 20-30 minutes for his show. Goes well. Get done, and we’re just chatting a bit about the whole project, et cetera. He asks whether we’ve gotten information about it up on Wikipedia yet, and I say that I hadn’t gotten around to it. He misunderstands, thinks I don’t really appreciate Wikipedia’s power to help spread the word. I say, “well, I do – a couple of years ago someone put up a Wiki entry on me because of something else I did – I just need to update it, and get other links on there about the BBTI project.”
“Oh, what other thing?”
“Well, about 8 years ago I did this odd conceptual art project, called Paint the Moon.”
Pause.
“Paint the Moon??”
It was my turn to misunderstand. But I’m used to having to explain about that project, so I start. “Um, yeah, see . . .”
“That was YOU????”
“Well, yeah.”
“Oh my God, I’m in the presence of greatness.”
No kidding, that’s what he actually said. Evidently made the guy’s night to find out that his favorite geeky gun science project also involved the nut behind his favorite crazy artistic project…
Nerds. Go figure. 😉
* * * * * * *
My friend was amused, sent me an email about it this morning. In responding, I said this:
My wife and I both thought it pretty funny. I need to decide whether I can write it up for the blog without sounding like a self-aggrandizing ass. Though it’s not like worrying about that has stopped me in the past . . .
And I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple of hours.
Now, one of the things about blogging, and in using this blog like I do, it that it is for promotion. So there’s a certain amount of self-aggrandizement that goes with the territory.
But the truth of the matter is that for the most part, I find myself bewildered by attention. Yeah, sure, I long ago learned (in the SCA, as a matter of fact) how to cultivate a ‘public persona’ which I could use in that regard – a simulacrum, as it were, who could do the public speaking, the interviews, that sort of thing. It gives me the psychological distance necessary to handle the attention, deflect it without letting it crawl inside my head.
And that’s mostly what you see when I post stuff like this to the blog (or elsewhere). Because while I understand the need for people to have heroes, or leaders, or favorite artists/authors, et cetera, I always find myself completely bewildered to be in such a role. From my perspective, I’m just doing stuff anyone could do, and am only very lucky to have it noticed.
And now *that* sounds like another bit of self-aggrandizement.
Jeez – there’s no winning. Ah, well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Marketing, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
On July 12, 2008, I noted this:
Huh. It finally happened, a week after I turned 50. Over 10,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams.
That was after having the .pdf of the novel available for approximately 19 months. Well, in the subsequent 17 months, there have been *another* 10,000 downloads of the novel. Yup, we just broke 20,000 total downloads. And all of that basically due to word of mouth.
It’s a pretty cool feeling, actually. And made even better by the fact that earlier this week I sent off the revised manuscript to a publisher, after working on it for the last three months (as also noted here on the blog). It’ll be a matter of a few weeks before the publisher and his in-house readers have a chance to review the book and make their decision about whether to publish it, but the preliminary response has been positive. You can now find the .pdf of the revised manuscript on the CoD homepage, if you would like to give that a try.
But regardless whether this particular publisher decides to go with it, I take a great deal of satisfaction knowing that some 20,000 people have at least downloaded the book. Something is happening there. And the best thing that an author can hope for is that people read his work. Yeah, fame and fortune would have some nice aspects, but *being read* is much more important. At least to me.
That this happens just before the BBTI project crosses 1,500,000 hits – in less than a year – is just gravy.
Cool.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Ballistics, Guns, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Just posted this over to the BBTI blog:
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here – there really isn’t much to say, day to day. But checking the numbers, I thought I would post a brief update which may be of interest.
October had over 140,000 hits to the BBTI site, which puts our total to date to 1,477,315. At present trends (we get between 4 and 5 thousand hits a day), we should cross 1.5 million sometime in the next week – less than one year since our initial launch! That’s pretty cool.
One of the more recent referrers that I found to be amusing was this one: http://feulibre.forumactif.com/ But we have had links from sites in Russian, Korean, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish, Italian, Portugese, Chinese, . . . you get the idea. Ballistics By The Inch is a decidedly global resource. Which I also think is pretty cool.
And update info for Communion of Dreams: October had over 875 downloads of the novel, putting the total downloads to date to something in excess of 19,500. Even better news – this morning I will finish up editing work on the novel which a publisher requested, and we should get a supplemental .pdf posted to the site with that manuscript in the next couple of days. With a little luck, the publisher will like the revisions, and before the end of the year I’ll have a deal to conventionally publish the book. Keep you fingers crossed for me.
Happy November, everyone!
Jim Downey
PS: I have now finished the editing – having eliminated 23,620 words in total from the manuscript. We’ll get a .pdf of the revised version posted to the CoD site later today.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Feedback, Guns, Health, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Science Fiction
Feeling better, though still not entirely over the gut-bug. But I thought I would share some numbers with you.
In the six or so weeks since the last update, another 1,500 people have downloaded Communion of Dreams, which puts the total number of downloads at 17,000. This makes me happy. And we have a small publisher who is interested in the book. Maybe.
In other number news, BBTI continues to get a lot of hits. July had over 100,000, and that puts the total so far at 1,126,943. This also makes me happy. Feedback generally on the whole project continues to be positive, though we’re always getting comments like this:
ANALYZING UR STATS for 9mm, KEL-TEC (which I own). Dont know when this study was done. looks like maybe mid ‘2008??? which is current enough to be relevant. However…> WRONG AMMO for analysis w/KEL-TEC. ANYTHING with a long barrel should ALWAYS use +P or +P+ to take advantage of – via specific brands at that. FEDERAL & SPEER ARENT right choice because they’re specifically designed for short-barrel. “Fps gain” would expectantly be marginal over short barrel.  CORBON might be close to reality – but this is only marginal. Would LOVE to see something like BUFFALO BORE or DOUBLE TAP +P/+P+ 124gr & 147gr put thru these. This is what I shoot all the time with it, and can only base “visual” on what I think… would bet its substantial “fps gains” over pistol barrel, then.Any chance of u updating ur chart to include some +P super-stuff specifically? Would even volunteer to send u a box or 2 of the BUffalo Bore if I could get a “yes” commitment from u!!
*sigh* Proof that, no matter what you do, somebody, somewhere, will bitch about it. It’s just the way people are.
But you can’t let that drive you nuts.
Too much. 😉
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI Blog.)
Got this in my inbox this morning (happily, my spam filter caught it):
What is Mind Mapping
Mind Mapping is a great technique that will enhance your thinking skills and memory. A Mind Map uses key words, colours and images to stimulate your brain.
Your brain has the ability to learn and remember large amounts of information. It works by linking ideas together. When you think, your brain starts off from one idea and radiates outwards to other ideas. This radiant thinking ability is natural and automatic.
For your brain to function effectively, it must express itself in a radiant form that reflects its thought processes. In other words, to use your brain effectively, you have to think radiantly. A Mind Map, when drawn, radiates from a central idea and can be considered an expression of the radiant thinking brain.
This workshop will show you how to use Mind Mapping techniques to boost your productivity. It will give you the knowledge and techniques to be a more effective manager.Benefits
By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:
* Use your brain effectively
* Increase your concentration
* Achieve a higher level of creativity
* Get a clearer organisation of thoughts
* Enhance your memory
* Boost your productivity
* Use Mind Maps for presentations, report writing, project planning and more
Just for giggles, I Googled the “institute” behind this, and came up with this site, where I also found the following paragraph:
Mind Maps ~
Al Gore, the former US Vice President, is counted amongst those who use Mind Mapping guidelines to support them in their disciplines. The May/June 07 issue of Time Magazine, which features Al Gore on the cover, includes a feature article with a photograph of Al Gore with his project Mind Map in front of him. The article points out that he uses Mind Mapping to help him keep control of his thoughts and that he used Mind Mapping software when working on his recent book.
Wow – Al Gore uses it?? Man, sign me up for that! Who’s with me? All we have to do is send an email to bullshit@eguruasia.com (no, seriously, that is the domain name, though not the specific address . . . though it might as well be) and hand over our credit card information to these great people, and we will soon be enlightened . . .
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 