Filed under: Alzheimer's, Bad Astronomy, Ballistics, Feedback, Hospice, Phil Plait, Promotion, Publishing, Science, YouTube
First, sharing this from Phil Plait:
I’d been familiar with the illusion, but this is a really good demonstration of it. Nice.
A follow-up to this post of last week: ‘Her Majesty’ is still hanging in there, though very weak. She spent a couple of hours sleeping on my chest this morning, purring quietly. Makes it hard for me to get any work done, but I don’t regret the time. At all.
We continue to get excellent reviews and comments about Her Final Year, which makes the lack of sales of the book even more frustrating. Ah well. I won’t be posting a lot here about that book, but you can follow developments on the dedicated blog. We do have a number of big things lined up which may be of interest – reviews in papers and magazines. As those come to fruition I’ll probably mention the most important items.
Oh, if you want, you can now find me on Twitter. I’m still getting the hang of it, but can see why it appeals to some folks a lot.
And another follow-up, this time to a post from several years ago: on Monday we ‘closed’ on the real estate transaction which was the resolution of that whole debacle. The property in question is now ours. There are still some lingering details which need to be dealt with over the next year, but once again that is really someone else’s concern. And now if I never have to deal with the people involved ever again, it’ll be just fine by me, as I am perfectly happy to let this little piece of small-town history finally be buried.
Lastly, yes, we *are* making some headway on the big BBTI revamp and expanded data sets. Remember, the data we collected during the tests in May was almost as much data as we had collected in all the previous tests. Then adding in the .22 tests from June, and I think that did surpass the previous amount.
It’s been a busy and productive year. And it isn’t yet 2/3 done.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Gardening, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
I brought in about 15 pounds of tomatoes from the garden this morning.
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We’re a bit over two weeks in on having Her Final Year published. Details about how it is going here, but basically we’ve been busy getting everything in place, getting the word out, and hoping that one of these days all our promotional efforts will begin to pay off.
* * * * * * *
An old friend dropped me a note this morning, announcing that she’s again returning to blogging after a longish break while she got an advanced degree.
Reviving a blog is not unlike reviving a garden plot, or returning to a book you started and then let lie. There’s weeding to be done, of course. And you sometimes have to dig a bit to condition the soil, find the richness that is waiting there. Cultivation sometimes takes a while to really take hold, and it can seem like all you are doing is pouring energy into the enterprise without much hope of return.
But as any good gardener or writer knows, that hard work early on pays off later, sometimes in ways you cannot predict. Sue is an excellent writer, and a hell of a gardener, and I would invite you to add her blog to your regular reading. It may seem to be Colorado oriented, but I know from her previous writing that you’ll find a lot there to enjoy and think about over time.
* * * * * * *
For the latest HFY blog post, I pulled up the Wikipedia page on myself. Wow – that really needs to be updated. It doesn’t have anything about my writing for guns.com, and of course nothing yet about Her Final Year. Early last year I added some info about the whole BBTI project, but I have always been reluctant about messing around with my own Wiki entry (as the guidelines appropriately indicate). If anyone is feeling charitable and would like to spend a bit of time, your help and objectivity would be much appreciated.
* * * * * * *
I brought in about 15 pounds of tomatoes from the garden this morning. A real mix of varietals, too: Early Girls, Brandywines, Lemon Boys, even some Big Boys (I think).
This was the first big batch. Previously, it’d only been a couple of this or that – enough to satisfy my love of having fresh toms for a salad or a snack. But now I have enough to do something with them – probably the first batch of sauce. And from the looks of things on the plants, soon there will be a veritable avalanche – enough so I’ll need to make time to do some serious canning.
This makes me happy. I love to have home-canned tomatoes through the year, and usually try to put up about 60 quarts or so. It’s a lot of work for a few weeks, but it is so very worth it down the line.
Like many things. Or so we hope.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Health, Kindle, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
In light of yesterday’s anticipation, today’s official announcement actually has me feeling sorta “flat.”
I’m not sure why. The book is now available in both Kindle and paperback versions, and all the preliminary indicators are that things will go well – we’ve even sold a book already! I should be excited.
Instead, I just feel tired and unmotivated. Odd.
Jim Downey
Well, I think we’re about ready to launch Her Final Year. Preliminary feedback on the website has all been very good – seems that the site works for a variety of different platforms and browsers. The book is still working its way through the Amazon system, is available on our e-commerce site as well as through the Kindle Store but not yet in Amazon’s general titles – though I expect that will change sometime today. The first shipment of paperbacks should arrive sometime today or tomorrow, and they can then be sent to those who helped us along the way as a thank-you. We’ve started to contact media outlets, and I already know that the newspaper I used to write for is planning on doing a piece about the book. And I’ve started to work up an article for guns.com about “Alzheimer’s & firearms.” Announcements are being made to send to friends and colleagues. In short, we’re almost ready.
It feels like those last moments waiting for a thrill ride, where the announcement comes over the loudspeaker reminding you to keep your hands and feet inside the car. The adrenaline surges, your hair stands on end, and a stupid half-fearful smile tries to form on your lips. In a moment, it will all start, and only then will you find out whether the ride was worth the cost of admission.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the HFY blog.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Gardening, Guns, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing
So, as my last couple of posts have indicated, almost my entire focus has been on . . . well, a lot of things, to be honest. The first part of May was the marathon BBTI testing, then there was another weekend of that in June. And a major push to get the garden in and secure from the deer and other critters. Weekly articles for Guns.com. Even a bit of conservation work here and there. But yeah, the vast majority of time and energy has gone into working on Her Final Year, the care-giving memoir.
So, almost all of my attention has been turned inwards. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it does show up in how things have been going for the two projects I tend to track: downloads of Communion of Dreams, and hits to the BBTI site.
I must admit, part of what’s happened with Communion of Dreams has been due to frustration with the publisher who had been wanting to publish the book. After all the work I put into multiple revisions, he went silent on me in the middle of sorting out the minor contract issues. Not a “we’ve reconsidered” or anything, in fact the last thing I had heard was a confirmation that they were committed to doing the book. But for six months now I haven’t had a response to my emails. I’ve pretty much just given up on it, poured my attention into the other projects. And that has been reflected in declining downloads – just 231 in May and 181 in June.
BBTI is a different matter, since my excitement over that hasn’t changed. We did get a bunch of excellent data during the last two test sequences, and plenty of people are eagerly waiting to see that – and we’re eager to provide it. But I haven’t done any real ‘support’ of the site, and so monthly hits have dropped off there to 279,656 in May and 256,179 in June.
But soon, soon I’ll turn my attention back to these things. First a revamp of the BBTI site to include the new data sets and freshen it up a bit. Then with CoD, we’ll see what happens – if Her Final Year launches successfully, it may mean that I’m able to attract a different publisher. Or, having gone the route of self-publishing once, I may just decide to do the same with the novel. Like I said, we’ll see.
As noted last week, we *are* closing in on being done with Her Final Year. I think it will be a very polished & professional product, much more so than most self-published books. Certainly, the amount of work which has gone into it has been massive. We’ll probably have the book(s) ready here in a couple of days, and then may have the supporting website ready for a test drive this next week – I’ll keep you posted.
Cheers to one and all . . .
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
A follow-up to last weekend’s post: Where I’m at…
We’ve moved ahead on all fronts. The ‘interior design’ of the book (both Kindle and print-on-demand versions) has been basically done, and the final decision on the front cover layout pretty much accomplished. We still need to position photos of both Martha Sr and Georgia in the text, tweak a couple of entries, as well as design the back cover. Most of the accounting stuff has been done, and things put in place for the website domain and hosting. Now that the cover design has been resolved, we can be thinking about the website design, but that should go really smoothly.
In other words, we’re closing in on being done, and being ready to “launch” the book. My Good Lady Wife has done an amazing amount of work with all the nuts & bolts of this, and it shows. My co-author and his wife have also put in countless hours reviewing, revising, and responding (graciously) to my incessant pushing to get this project completed. Well, I’m good at being annoying, so I was the logical person to annoy everyone to keep working.
It’s exciting. Stay tuned for official announcements, perhaps even a sneak preview.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Guns, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
No, this isn’t a “Find Jimbo!” puzzle. Just a reference point for those who wonder about my sparse posting here.
Sent this in a friend a bit ago, in an email exchange:
Have a good weekend,
Yeah, thanks. The latest round of unexpected storms cleared out early enough for me to get in a walk after my PT. Now a shower, and then lock in for a prolonged session of looking for typos and formatting errors on HFY. Following that, due diligence with Amazon’s print-on-demand system so I understand what tweaks we need to make for that formatting.
In other words, the book is coming together pretty quickly, and we’re in the final stages of that. Got the necessary LLC bank account opened this week, next week I’ll set up the stuff with Amazon and Paypal. Tomorrow Alix, I, and John (the co-author) have a Skype session and we’ll probably outline the website design – the FB, LJ, and Twitter accounts will all follow suit, once that is up. We should be able to test drive the whole thing a few days before our scheduled July 1 ‘launch’, but that arbitrary deadline can be moved easily enough if we need to do so.
It’s fun doing this, I admit. Nice to be using a lot of different skills I’ve acquired. Regardless of how the book does, at least I have that.
And then there’s the book conservation & binding backlog, getting articles to guns.com, and general life stuff.
It’s good to be busy.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Feedback, Hospice, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Writing stuff
I’ve written a lot here over the last few years on the disfunctional nature of the publishing industry today. This blog was ostensibly started to chronicle the process of finding an agent and/or publisher for Communion of Dreams, after all. That was four years, and almost 31,000 downloads of the book, ago. Trapdoor Books is supposed to publish Communion of Dreams sometime soon, though that has been pending (and driving me somewhat nuts) for four months.
Also pending for four months has been a submission of Her Final Year to a publisher. They were supposed to get back to us a month ago, according to what they told us in our initial submission. A number of other publishers and agents we’ve also contacted have not bothered to respond at all.
Now, I’m not ready to give up on Trapdoor – they seem to be honestly working hard to establish themselves in the “geek fiction” world, and whenever everything comes together to get Communion of Dreams actually published, I think it’ll work to my benefit (and theirs).
But my co-author and I are giving very serious consideration to publishing Her Final Year ourselves. And I would appreciate your feedback on whether we should or not. Let me outline what I see as the advantages and disadvantages
First, and foremost, it gets the book out there where it can do some good. This is actually very important to us – there is a great need for more “nuts & bolts” care-giving information regarding Alzheimer’s/Dementia in general, and from a male care-giver’s perspective in particular. So, immediacy.
Next, there’s cost. Particularly if we concentrate on e-book sales (predominately through Amazon), we can likely keep the price down a fair amount over a conventional paper book (though we would likely set it up so that people could get a Print-On-Demand version if they wanted it). This will help get the book to people who need it. We could designate some portion of all sales to go to charities such as the Alzheimer’s association and still get a fair payment akin to conventional book royalties for myself and my co-author. There’s cost.
We would have more direct control over not just the book, but also for an associated website which could function as a support group for care-givers and their families. We’ve intended to do this from the start, but by bypassing a publisher we avoid issues related to control over the site. That’s control.
The disadvantages? A lot more work. We would probably form a small corporation to function as the umbrella under which all of this would be done. That doesn’t bother me, as I know how to do such things from previous experience with the gallery, but it would be more work and some cost. We’d have to do all the promotion ourselves . . . but these days, authors are expected to take a very active role in promotion, anyway. We wouldn’t have the gravitas of an established publisher behind us, and that would mean limitations in getting the book distributed though conventional bookstores. We wouldn’t have the benefit of an in-house editor and design team. Those are the big disadvantages that I see.
So, I’d like your thoughts. Do you think a niche book like this could be done successfully as a self-publishing project? Would you trust it enough to buy a copy, or would you want to see a ‘name’ behind it? What price point for the electronic version would compensate for that? $9.99? $4.99? Would say a pledge to donate $1.00 from every sale to the Alzheimer’s Assn or a Hospice organization make a difference?
Like I said, we’re giving this serious consideration – but it is a big step. Part of my motivation to do this is just based on how long the whole process of getting Communion of Dreams published has taken (and continues to take). Do you think I am letting my frustration over that outweigh more practical considerations?
Let me know, either in comments here, on Facebook, or in a private email.
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, NPR, Press, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Society, Writing stuff
I woke this morning, birds singing, the sun shining, and feeling wonderf . . .
No, wait. Scratch that. It’s winter. No birds. Greyness in the dark, as the sun wasn’t up yet. And I had the usual collection of aches and pains common for middle-age .
Still, nothing unexpected hurt, and while I’m not quite to the point where I am pleasantly surprised to wake up at all, I still tend to think that any day above ground beats the alternative.
Then I paid attention to the radio. To this, in particular:
Today AOL announced that it had agreed to acquire the Huffington Post website for $315 million. $300 million of this is in cash, the rest of the purchase in AOL stock. Arianna Huffington, who co-founded the site six years ago, will continue on as President and editor-in-chief.
Gah.
OK, I didn’t read the Huffington Post. No, not because of their slightly-liberal slant – their politics don’t bother me in the slightest. Rather, because I hated their overall design and shallowness. And their willingness to promote anti-science claptrap. And Arianna’s voice makes my teeth hurt, and I can’t read anything the woman writes without hearing her voice.
But still, something about the sale bugged me more than these little things would explain.
It wasn’t until I had some coffee and had a chance to get my brain completely up to operating speed that I figured out why the news rubbed me so much the wrong way: exploitation.
OK, let me explain. I used to own an art gallery. And for 8 years I, my partner, my wife, and my employees busted butt to create a great space to showcase lots of local and regional talent. Over that time we represented hundreds of artists, did well over a hundred featured shows, sent out tens of thousands of full-color postcards, and sold a bunch of artwork. We did everything we could think of to promote our artists, to display the artwork to its best advantage, and to make sure our partnership with our artists was to everyone’s advantage.
And one of the things which used to chap my ass the worst was local bars and restaurants which used to exploit artists by hanging their artwork on the walls and saying it gave the artists “exposure”. I even wrote about this in my newspaper column after I had closed the gallery. The bars and restaurants almost never displayed the work well, seldom had any decent signage about the work/artist, and rarely if ever sold anything. But in exchange for this “exposure” they got to put fresh artwork up regularly to decorate their walls, without having to actually, you know, buy real art from real artists.
And this is why it bugs me so much to hear that the Huffington Post has been sold for $315 million. Because they have a business model which doesn’t pay their writers – they just give them “exposure.” Oh, some celebrities may get paid for contributing. But the average blogger who creates content for the site doesn’t get squat.
Will any of that $300 million in cash from the sale be parceled out to the people who have been writing for the site? Nope.
So, the lesson is clear: there’s gold in them thar artists – so long as you’re the one to be doing the exploiting.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 