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.)
Again, Her Majesty is sleeping on the pink pillow in my office, content in the way that only an old blind cat can be.
* * * * * * *
It was a long week. A surprisingly long week. The bit of a cold I was coming down with last weekend decided to try and find new frontiers in my chest. Given how sick I was with pneumonia last summer (and the lingering pain of the torn intercostal muscles that resulted from that), I decided that taking it *very* easy for a few days was the only smart course of action. Lots of naps, lots of tea, lots of codeine to suppress coughing.
But still, there was progress. The proof copy of Her Final Year arrived. We went over it to make sure everything translated OK for the printing, then ordered in promotional copies for my co-author and I. Uploaded the Kindle files. Built the e-commerce site to go with our website. Made sure the Kindle version translated properly. Got a Facebook page made. And are still working to get the final tweaks and changes to the website before going public with everything.
No, I didn’t do most of this. At best, my contribution has been to do a bit of writing for the website, try and help coordinate things. I know when to stay out of the way and leave others who are more skilled to get the work done. All credit goes to my Good Lady Wife and my co-author.
* * * * * * *
And likewise, I don’t deserve any credit for Her Majesty’s surprising resilience. Yeah, she’s sleeping quietly now, but the last few days have been remarkable. She’s still mostly blind, partially deaf. But she’s started navigating with much more intent, no longer randomly wandering in a lazy figure 8, bouncing off of the same things time and again. Her appetite has returned. Her desire to seek out and use the litterbox is back.
There was a point a week or so ago when I almost called the vet to discuss “that decision”. I held off because even though she seemed due little but pity, she also didn’t seem to be in any pain.
I am, of course, glad that I held off. Sometimes things come together in ways unpredicted.
Jim Downey
of “mixed emotions” – the 40th anniversary of my mom’s death in a car accident and getting this:
Yeah, that’s the proof copy of Her Final Year. And it looks perfect.
We’ll be asking for “beta” testers for the website soon. If you’re interested and willing, drop me a note or post a comment.
Jim Downey
‘Her Majesty’ is curled up on a pink pillow here in my office. She doesn’t venture too far now. Just wanders a bit until I pick her up, take her to be tempted with a bit of canned food, or some water, or a litter box.
* * * * * * *
I just finished proof-reading Her Final Year. This is the version formatted for print-on-demand, so it was a painstakingly close look to make sure that not only had we caught all the little typos and whatnot, but that the layout was right. It took me four days of very close reading to do this – but not nearly as much work as my Good Lady Wife put into preparing the text.
This afternoon I’ll take care of setting up everything for publication of both the Kindle version as well as the print-on-demand version. Probably upload the files tomorrow. Also this afternoon, go over the website design with my GLW, so we can get that going and ready for ‘beta testing’.
* * * * * * *
There’s almost a fear being at this point. A trepidation. Did we do everything right? Will people find the finished product of value? Will we be ignored, laughed at?
I don’t know if it makes sense. But we have a solid 30 months of work in this book. Not just me. Not just me and my wife. Not even just me, my wife, my co-author and his wife. No, we also have about a score of people who have done test-readings and provided feedback. And plenty of friends and family who have encouraged us.
It’s that moment, standing on the edge, looking down, wondering just how insane you have to be to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, trusting to so many things going right or at least not horribly wrong.
* * * * * * *
The emotional sense is right. The echoes of the final days of caring for Martha Sr that come from reading about that experience jibe perfectly as I pick up the cat, settle her on her pillow for one of the last times. The clock clicks, wheels turn.
And soon we will see what happens.
Jim Downey
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, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Gardening, Guns, Publishing, Science Fiction
Sorry I haven’t been posting much. It’s been a long and busy week. Had bookbinding and gardening stuff to do, as well as getting a couple of things written and sent to guns.com. But the most important and time-consuming task has been working on Her Final Year. As I noted on my Facebook page:
97,982. That’s how many words are in the main care-giving book. And it’s now closely edited and all formatted. Whew.
The last couple of chapters are especially emotional and hard to read, even now three and a half years later. But it’s done.
And now I need to wrap up another article (this is a fun one, on guns in Science Fiction) and then get on the road for another weekend of BBTI testing.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Publishing
News item of interest today:
Kindle Books Outsell Print Books on Amazon
* * *
Before the Kindle, Amazon started selling traditional paper books in July 1995. But now, Amazon has announced that Kindle books are outselling paperbacks and hardcovers.Since April 1, Amazon has sold 105 Kindle books for every 100 print books sold. These numbers include books that have no Kindle edition. Also, for all of 2011 so far, Amazon has had the fastest year-over-year growth rate for its books business due to the overwhelming Kindle sales and steady print book sales.
* * *
“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO. “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.
When the Kindle first came out, I was *very* skeptical that it would replace conventionally printed books. Here’s what I said in November 2007:
I think it is still a hard sell. $400 is a chunk for something which only kinda-sorta replaces a real book. And if you drop it in the mud, it isn’t just $7.95 to buy a new copy. But it does seem to be an intelligent application of the relevant tech, and sounds intriguing. There will be those who snap it up, just ’cause – but Amazon has a long way to go before it is mainstream.
That’s my guess.
Well, I was wrong, and Jeff Bezos was right. Well, sorta.
The Kindle 3, which came out last summer, is a lot different than the original Kindle. It’s smaller. Lighter. Works better. And costs less than half what the original did. In fact, just yesterday I ordered one for $189.
Yeah, let me repeat that: I ordered a Kindle yesterday.
I had been doing research into the e-reader in preparation for publishing Her Final Year and part of that preparation was going out and playing with the latest version of the Kindle at a local store. I’ll be honest, I was flat-out impressed with the current machine.
As I’ve noted before, I’m a ‘late adopter’ of technology, always willing to wait for things to mature enough that the bugs are worked out and the price comes down. And I’m also a professional bookbinder & book conservator. When *I* am willing to buy an e-reader, then things have changed. As I said 18 years ago:
For me, the book is a codex, something that you can hold in your hand and read. From the earliest memories of my science fiction saturated youth, I remember books becoming obsolete in the future, replaced by one dream or another of “readers”, “scanners”, or even embedded text files linked directly to the brain. Some say ours is a post-literate culture, with all the books-on-tape, video, and interactive media technology. I think I read somewhere recently that Sony (or Toshiba or Panasonic or someone) had finally come up with a hand-held, book-sized computer screen that can accommodate a large number of books on CD ROM. Maybe the future is here.
Maybe. Lord knows that I would be lost without a computer for all my writing, revisions, and play. The floppy drive that is in this book was taken from my old computer (my first computer) when a friend installed a hard drive. It is, in many ways, part of my history, part of my time at Iowa, and all the changing that I did there.
Yeah, the future is indeed here. Mine should arrive the first of next week.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 