Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Guns, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Writing stuff
Thought I’d pass along a small note – I’ve been asked to do some freelance writing for Guns.com.
In spite of it being about the oldest and most obvious firearms-related domain name possible, not much has been done with it previously. Late last year a new crew took over management, and the new owners seem to have a pretty good attitude about what they want to develop it into. They like my writing on firearm-related topics, and starting next week I’ll be a regular contributor there. It should be fun, and I’m actually kinda excited to be involved with it!
This is very early in the game, but I think it has a lot of potential, not just for me but for anyone interested in almost anything to do with firearms. Check out their site if you get a chance. I don’t plan on cross-posting much here, but if something particularly interesting or noteworthy happens, I’ll probably mention it here and on Facebook.
Wish me luck!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Babylon 5, Ballistics, Bipolar, Failure, Harry Potter, Hospice, Humor, John Lennon, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
“Vir, do you believe in fate?”
“Well, actually, I believe there are currents in the universe, eddies and tides that pull us one away or the other. Some we have to fight, and some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace.”
Recently, I came up with an audacious idea. This is something which happens to me now and again. Most of the time, I chuckle over it, consider the possibilities, then let it slide back into the creative froth. But every now and again I get an idea I take somewhat seriously, and consider practically – not so much on whether I think it will work, but on whether I think I can convince enough other people that it will work.
Through the last couple of decades I’ve done better at this than you might think, batting about .500. Here’s a list of the big ones, along with a synopsis:
- Opening an art gallery. This *almost* worked, but remains my most expensive failure to date. It’s very sobering to lose money that belongs to family and friends who trust your judgment, not to mention all the work of yourself, your partner, spouses and employees.
- Writing a novel, and getting it published. Looks like this one will actually work.
- Paint the Moon. My biggest artistic success to date.
- Glass Canopy. This caught the imagination of a number of people, and generated a lot of discussion locally. Now such structures are used elsewhere for exactly this purpose. A failure, but not a total one.
- Nobel Prize for JK Rowling. A debacle, in that so many people hated the idea. But perhaps I was just premature.
- Ballistics By The Inch. A huge success. This was in no way just my idea, and I only did part of the work, but I think the vision I had for how the project would be received was largely mine.
- Co-authoring a care-giving memoir. Still early in the evaluation period on this, so can’t say whether it is a success or not.
And looking over that list, thinking about it, one of the clear things I see which helps make something a success is the amount of work I (and others) put into it. When presented with a zany idea, most people will be amused, say why they think it is crazy, and then more or less forget about it. But if confronted with the fact of an idea made manifest, a lot of that skepticism disappears (or never occurs to people in the first place.)
This isn’t very profound, of course, and certainly isn’t at all new. But I am still somewhat surprised to see how much it actually operates in the real world. It’s like imagination is so difficult for people that they just can’t get past their initial dismissal. I asked for comments on my latest idea, and so far have only heard from one person, who pointed out potential problems with it (this was actually a very helpful response). I can only guess that most other people consider it too nutty an idea to even bother with – but in my gut I’m pretty certain that if this resource existed it would be hugely popular and widely used.
But who knows? Was the voice a ghost or just hallucination? Do you embrace the current or fight it? Failure is real – both due to risk as well as inaction.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Feedback, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction
Well. Post 999. Who woulda thunk it?
I started this blog one month short of 4 years ago, ostensibly to discuss the process of revising, then submitting for publication Communion of Dreams.
Of course, along the way it became something much more than that. Another book emerged from it. I made a lot of friends. I connected with old friends. I documented the twistings and turnings of my life and fortunes. Stared into my navel far too much. Stared into the bright sun upon occasion. Started a new project, and watched it become insanely popular (though not exactly remunerative.)
I’m still waiting for final confirmation of the publication date and details from the publisher who is interested in CoD – even at this late date in the whole process, things could fall through. But with a little luck, the book will actually be out sometime in the new year, and we’ll see whether the over 29,000 downloads it has had since I first launched this blog translate into actual sales.
Wow – 29,000 downloads. That still amazes me, given that it has all been word of mouth and informal promotion.
So, thanks for the ride, everyone.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Survival
Well, well, well. For the last couple of months the totals have been slowly approaching our all time high of 303,000 hits in December 2008 – the first full month when we launched BBTI and made a big splash in the firearms world.
November 2010 blew that number right out of the water. We had a total of 384,578 hits last month.
Wow.
As I noted last Friday, I was pretty confident that we would break the all-time high in November. But a big surge at the end of the month, in part thanks to the article in Concealed Carry Magazine but in bigger part to an article which showed up on the popular Survival Blog which cited our data. Thanks, guys!
News on Communion of Dreams is less dramatic. Things are still pending with publication, and I don’t have much info to share about that yet. Downloads, which had jumped in October, have dropped back to their usual range of 600+. As soon as I have details to share with everyone about the publication date, I will definitely post it here and on FaceBook.
All in all, the continued success of both of these endeavors amazes and pleases me. Now we just need to add in similar success with the care-giving book . . .
Happy December, everyone!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Welcome to November. And that means it’s time to crunch some numbers.
For Ballistics By The Inch, we had a total of 293,427 hits in October. That beats September by about 12,000 hits, and puts us within about ten thousand of our all-time-high month when the site first launched – that amounts to about one day’s hits. The total overall hits is now 3,818,460 – we should break four million in about three weeks, about the time of our second anniversary. Wow. Thanks everyone!
And a personal note: I’ve mentioned in passing that sometime in the very near future I will sign the final contract for the commercial publication of Communion of Dreams, with the book to be rolling off the presses in just a few short months. When I sign that contract, we’ll need to pull all the downloadable content from my homepage – but no worry, because the book will be available in electronic formats for different readers at a very reasonable price, as well as being available in both hardcover and paperback versions. Word of this has helped prompt a surge in downloads in the last month, and October’s totals were double that for September – overall, some 1,200 downloads of the complete novel. A nice affirmation, and puts the total downloads of the book at something approaching 29,000. Thanks, everyone – I hope you decide to get the updated version and/or a hardcopy of the book when it comes out soon!
So, happy November!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I noted earlier that I hadn’t heard from the publisher about when Communion of Dreams would be out.
That has changed.
Just a bit ago I got an email with information about moving forward with publication. I’m going to wait to coordinate a formal announcement with the publisher, but the good news is that we’re looking at a very short time horizon before it will be out. I have a couple of weeks to get the manuscript tweaked (some very minor changes were requested), and we’re now jumping into cover design and whatnot.
Yay!
Jim Downey
Happy October, everyone!
And since it is the start of the month, it’s time to talk numbers.
For Ballistics By The Inch, last month we had 281,920 hits – putting us about 20,000 hits under our all time high of December 2008, when we first launched the site and word spread. That’s not much – at current hit rates, it’s about 2.5 days or one good link at a big gun forum. Whew. And the overall total of hits we’ve seen is 3,525,033 – at this rate, we’ll break 4 million by our second anniversary.
For Communion of Dreams, last month 515 people downloaded the full original novel, 56 people downloaded the revised version, and there were over 160 downloads of at least one of the MP3 files. That puts total actual downloads over 27,000, with something like another 3,000 downloads of at least one of the MP3 files.
Thanks everyone for helping to share the info about both sites!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted on the BBTI blog.)
Gah.
I’ve mentioned here and on Facebook that I’ve jumped into the pit of despair known as Searching For An Agent for the care giving book. Talk about a soul-sucking, mind-numbing process.
Gah.
Anyway, since my Good Lady Wife has been tackling this problem in the logical way (using Literary and Agent guides and listings, websites designed to help bring authors and agents together, et cetera), I thought I would approach it from somewhat less conventional directions, hoping that I might come across some possibilities she might not. One such effort has been to read Agents’ blogs. There’s a bunch of these, and of course they’re stuffed with “insight into the industry” and “helpful tips on how to get your query letter noticed” and suchlike. Good, basic information.
Or is it?
Here’s what I mean: the industry is changing. And a lot of what you read on these blogs doesn’t necessarily apply a year or a month or even 30 minutes after it has been posted (if it ever did). And if it did apply then, the advice may have reflected someone’s own agenda more than reality. Or their own misunderstanding about the industry.
Here’s a classic example that sums up my point, nicely. Alan Rinzler is a well established, well-connected editor and agent with decades of experience. He has a blog stuffed with information about the publishing industry. Occasionally he does profiles of literary agents, and two years ago he did one of Elise Proulx, which went on at some length about her desire to find upcoming talent. Here’s a quote from that piece:
“I’m eager to discover writers who aren’t famous yet but will be,” says San Francisco-based literary agent Elise Proulx.
“My mission is to promote literature and make some money for deserving authors,” said Proulx, whose five tips for unpublished writers appear below. “My specialty is both high quality fiction and what I call “pragmatic nonfiction”, meaning books that are useful and prescriptive, like good parenting books,” added Proulx, an associate at the venerable Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency.
Cool, eh? She sounds like someone pumped about her job, her firm, her industry, doesn’t she? Well, here’s the kicker, an addendum to that same profile piece:
News flash (12/08):
We’ve received word from Elise that she’s left the literary agency business. We’re very sad to see her go and wish her good fortune in all her endeavors.
OK, I don’t know why Ms. Proulx decided to get out of the business. Could have been for personal reasons completely unrelated to what is happening in the industry. But that move came about two months after the profile piece that Rinzler posted about her. She had to know that this change was coming – and yet see what she told Rinzler?
Gah.
Jim Downey
That’s how many downloads of the novel there were in August. That puts the total number of downloads to 26,500. Who woulda thunk it?
Also, share a bit of other good news: I’d had some ongoing issues with complications of the pneumonia I struggled with most of last month, but I just heard that X-rays I had taken this past Monday are all clear, meaning that there is nothing serious going on. Yay!
Well, I have a Skype chat with my co-author to talk about Her Final Year, so I better get to that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Health, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Odd little thing I just noticed…
OK, let me back up a bit. As mentioned earlier, I’m fighting an annoying and rather stubborn lung infection. I was doing better the first of this week, after a course of antibiotics, but in the last couple of days have started another downward dip. Just got another round of antibiotics from the doc, with instructions to take it easy and see him Monday if I am not feeling better. Because of all this I am feeling a bit pathetic and non-creative, but I am not feeling quite like I just want to nap – I’m hovering over a no-man’s-land between sickness and health, unmotivated to do much. So I read through the stuff that needs work on the care giving book, but am not up to actually doing anything about it.
Anyway. Because of being stuck in this state, the most I feel like doing is poking around a bit. Which I started to do with the stats for Communion of Dreams. Usually, I just check to see how many downloads have occurred and leave it at that. Those are the numbers that I report on here. But a bit ago I decided to see just how many hits the site has been getting.
And this is what I found curious. It’s now running about 10,000 hits a month, and has been for over the last year. Low during that period was 8,500, the high 13,000.
These are not huge numbers – the BBTI site has been getting about 8,000 hits a day of late – but they’re not too shabby, either. And what is curious is that in the first few months of 2009, the numbers jumped from about 1,500 to about 4,000 and then to 9,000 – and they have stayed at that higher level since.
I’m not really sure why. There has been something of an uptick in the number of downloads each month during that time period, but it was nothing like a seven-fold increase. It just seems that more people are coming by the site on a regular basis. I suppose it could be tied to the BBTI project, in that there is a link in my bio there to the CoD site, but I’d be surprised if that accounted for all of it.
Interesting.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 