Kickstarter | Communion Of Dreams

A “best seller”? More or Less.

October 24, 2022, 3:32 pm
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, BBC, care-giving, caregiving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Her Final Year, Kickstarter, mathematics, More or Less, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, statistics, writing

This past weekend a broadcast of the BBC show/podcast “More or Less” caught my ear, as it was discussing the economics of conventional trade publishing. I would encourage listening to the entire thing (about 9 minutes), but the basics are:

Of about 50,000 new titles published in a year, just 0.4% will sell more than 100,000 copies
To ‘break even’, a title needs to sell about 5,000 copies
Some 86% of all titles sell fewer than 5,000 copies
Something like 15% sell fewer than a dozen copies

Whoa.

I knew the numbers weren’t good, and that I had been relatively successful with self-publishing my own books (after years of trying to land a conventional publishing deal), but I had no idea that they were that dismal.

For perspective, all three of my books broke that 5,000 threshold the first year that they were available. And two went on to break it again the second year. Total downloads (ballpark numbers) for each of my books so far:

Communion of Dreams: in excess of 50,000 downloads from Amazon, with another ~25,000 downloads of the prior pdf before that
Her Final Year: in excess of 11,000 downloads from Amazon
St Cybi’s Well: in excess of 9,000 downloads from Amazon

I’ve been mildly disappointed in the performance of St Cybi’s Well, but that is largely in comparison to Communion of Dreams, which was published a decade earlier (and which has continued to see strong sales/downloads each year). This kind of puts that into perspective.

One thing I want to mention: free downloads. Yeah, that skews the numbers a bit, but not as much as you might think for the two novels. For those, free downloads account for about 15% of SCW and about 20% of CoD totals. HFY saw a much larger percentage of free downloads, but that was because we saw the book more as a public service to other care-givers than a moneypot.

Oh, and “best seller”? Other info I’ve seen indicates that about 50,000 copies is typically considered a best seller in the trade publication industry. Now, that’s for one-year sales, not cumulative sales over a decade. But still, it makes me feel pretty good about how CoD has done.

Jim Downey

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Well, well, well …

March 29, 2022, 4:16 pm
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St Cybi's Well, writing

Last May, I wrote about the process of designing and executing the artistic leather bindings of Communion of Dreams. Now that all of my Kickstarter backers have made their choices, I thought I’d give a preview of the process of designing and executing the artistic leather bindings of St Cybi’s Well.

I had a piece of Preseli Bluestone from the quarry at Craig Rhosyfelin (which is the source for the Stonehenge Bluestones in the inner ring). This site appears in a scene in chapter 8. Well, I had the stone cut into 14 slices (two times the magical number 7). Which I then used to construct a “well” as the cover design. The center of the well has thin blue leather to represent the water in the well. Like this:

*Actual stones on the right, laser-cut ‘stones’ under the leather on the left.*

Each of the 14 leather-bound copies will have one actual slice of the stone mounted on top of the leather, and thirteen ‘stones’ of bookboard under the leather for bas relief. In this way, all fourteen copies of the leather-bound edition will be connected into one “well”. Here are two examples:

*I’m offering a choice between curvilinear and rectilinear water in the well.*

As with the titling for Communion of Dreams, the letterforms are etched using my Glowforge laser, then infilled with real gold leaf.

The other major design decision was what to do for the endpapers. Communion of Dreams had marbled endpapers. For St Cybi’s Well I wanted something different. Thinking through the various visuals in the book, one recurrent image I used was of a Celtic spiral. A symbol of whirlpools and infinity, but also of the transition between realms of reality. Combine that with the ‘healing energy’ in the novel characterized as being a luminous blue. So this is what I came up with: a thin sparkly blue spiral, cut with the laser from commercial glitterpaper stock. It will be mounted onto black endpapers, one each on the paste-down sheets front and rear. Here’s an example:

*Technically tricky to mount it without smearing the adhesive, but also making sure the spiral is uniform.*

I do have all the text blocks sewn up and ready to use. I’ve ordered the leather, and soon will be completing these bindings. There are five text blocks and five stones (numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, and 11) still available. If you’re interested in one, you can still choose your color of leather. Details here. Once I finish the nine books for my Kickstarter backers, I’ll just finish the remaining five in leather of my choosing (and raise the price).

I’ll post pics when I have the first batch finished.

Jim Downey

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At long last …

May 12, 2021, 2:44 pm
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, bookbinding techniques, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St Cybi's Well, writing

It’s been five years since I last wrote about my efforts to come up with a satisfactory cover design for the premium leather edition of Communion of Dreams. Well, needless to say, a lot has happened since then. Not the least of which was getting, and learning to use, my Glowforge laser.

And now I’ve finally resolved the many different design and execution issues to my satisfaction, to the point where I’m completing the promised leather-backed copies for my Kickstarter supporters. Here it is:

This is going to be a bit about this binding, and how it differs from the hardcover cloth binding.

First thing, the sewing is different. Rather than just being sewn onto linen tapes, the books are sewn onto heavy linen cords:

Why the weird arrangement? So that those cords provide additional texture to the spine of the finished book, along the location of where the tree branches are (see the first pic above). Once the sewing was done, the text blocks were glued up and rounded slightly. All of that was very straight-forward.

However, as noted in that blog post in 2016, the problem I had was trying to achieve the raised texture of the tree for the rest of the cover. I played around with a bunch of different solutions, until I settled on using the laser to cut out a slightly abstracted version of the Burr Oak image:

That’s in the bed of the laser. The material is archival 50pt board. Trying to cut out such an image by hand would take me hours, probably. The laser does it in about four minutes. (Though I did spend some considerable amount of time coding the design so the laser would do it.)

Here’s the image free of the surrounding board:

That is then pasted onto a sheet of paper, and the book cover boards are mounted on the back in the appropriate location. Then it is time to mount the leather, and impress it such that the tree is in relief, with this result:

(Actually, that was a practice piece, not the final version pictured above. But I forgot to take an image of the final version at this stage.)

The edges of the leather are then turned-in, and the corners formed. This gives you a finished case (what bookbinders call the cover).

Next, need to do the titling. And this is where the laser once again comes in very handy, though it took me a while to get just the right technique worked out. After the design for the title is done, the leather is masked and then engraved with the laser to an appropriate depth:

Once that is done, the engraved areas are cleaned of residual charred leather, and gilding size applied:

Once that cures, then it’s time to apply the gold leaf:

Now, that’s real gold, in multiple layers, about $25 worth. This process is different than traditional gilding done by bookbinders, so I had to work up a whole different process to do it (based on my experience with traditional gilding). The result is very satisfactory, though, since I have a much greater range of options for the final design.

Once the titling work was done, it was time to prepare to mount the text block to the case. First, I tear the outer page of the outer signature, and trim the cords to the appropriate length:

This combination, with the two liner tabs, will make for a *very* secure mounting to insure the cover and text block stay together. Then, you fray out the linen cords, so that they will not present excess bulk inside the cover:

Then the whole thing is pasted out and mounted inside the case, similar to how the hardcover cloth bindings were done. Once everything is dry and secure, I added endpapers of hand-marbled paper I made:

Giving the finished product:

I tried a lot of different color combinations, and have decided that this is the one I think works the best (and echoes the original cover nicely). My Kickstarter backers have the option of choosing a different color, but henceforth this will be the only color option available for other collectors.

Next, after finishing these bindings: designing the premium leather binding for St Cybi’s Well.

Jim Downey

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Let’s talk economics.

January 31, 2021, 2:48 pm
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, book art, book conservation, book design, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, Kickstarter, Legacy Bookbindery, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing

Last week I went through the mechanics of turning words into books. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about the economics of that, as well as being an author.

When I set up the Kickstarter for St Cybi’s Well lo these many years ago, a lot of my estimates in deciding on what goals to shoot for were based on … blind faith, to be perfectly honest.

I’d published Communion of Dreams, and had some sense of the possible income that could generate, as well as the amount of work that went into writing/editing/formatting it. But I really had no idea what the costs would be for printing and hand-binding copies of that book or the yet unwritten St Cybi’s Well. I had a pretty good handle on how much time it would take me to do the hand binding, based on my book conservation work. And likewise, what the cost of materials would be, other than the printing. Now that I’ve gone through all of that with both books, I have a much better idea of how costs break down, so I thought I would share all of that.

Based on 55 copies (edition of 53, plus two author/artist proof copies), the actual out-of-pocket expense runs about $50 per copy for the two different books. That covers the cost of the oversize archival paper (so the grain/drape of the pages is correct for hand binding), the printing, and going to collect the printed pages. It also covers the cost of archival bookboard and cover cloth. (The leather copies are two or three times as much, depending on the actual leather used.) Were I to bind a single copy, it would take me about 2 hours of labor. If I bind multiple copies at a time, that drops to about 1.5 hours of labor. (Leather is about 2x the labor.)

My Kickstarter goal was $17,000. Which succeeded. After deducting the fees paid to Kickstarter, and the costs of the different “rewards/premiums” for the backers, I wound up with about $12,000. Which, truthfully, isn’t a bad advance for a relatively unknown author.

It took me seven years of writing work to finish St Cybi’s Well, rather than the one or two years I originally expected. That was both embarrassing and stressful, since I made promises to people I didn’t fulfill. But it’s over, and everyone seems happy with the end product, so let’s just talk about the amount of labor that went into it. I’d conservatively guesstimate that I have something on the order of 2,000 hours of labor in writing, rewriting, editing, and then composing (the last is mostly thanks to my Good Lady Wife) the book. That *might* be as much as twice as long as it took me to do the same with Communion of Dreams, though spread out over a longer period of time. So, do the math, and I earned about $6 per hour.

That’s just the Kickstarter, of course. Now that the book is done, I’ll continue to earn money on purchases of the downloads, printed paperbacks, and special order hand-bound copies. How much is hard to say. I have had about 40,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams, though a big chunk of those are free downloads. Still, with Amazon’s system, 2/3 of every sale goes to the author (as opposed to like 5-7% for conventional royalties with a publisher), and that adds up. To date, I’ve only had about a thousand downloads of St Cybi’s Well, and most of those have been free downloads. Which has been a little disappointing, but we’ll see how things go over time.

As for the printed paperback copies, there I earn a bit more from Amazon than I would for the downloads, but not a lot. And they don’t amount to very many sales. The signed copies I sell directly do a little better still, but again, that’s just a handful of books per year.

As for the hand–bound books, there I do make a lot more, about $150 per copy. But my conservation labor is billed at $200 per hour, so at 1.5 hours of labor, I’m making half of what I would professionally. The return on the leather bound copies is even worse.

So, why do it? Why even offer those books on the websites?

Because I enjoy it. I enjoy knowing that the books that I create will be enjoyed, perhaps cherished. Read, and passed down to children and grandchildren. Like most artists, I’m willing to trade some financial reward for that satisfaction, and I can afford to do so. Maybe it shouldn’t be the case, and it wouldn’t be the case ideally, but we do what we can under the circumstances.

Anyway, my books will be available for free download tomorrow (the First of the month, as always). Give ’em a try. If you like ’em, you’re always welcome to either purchase a download or one of the physical copies later, if you can afford to do so. But don’t feel guilty if you can’t; as noted I can afford to give them away, and take joy in knowing people read them.

Jim Downey

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Turning words into books.

January 25, 2021, 12:14 pm
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Book Conservation, Pandemic, Plague, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, Covid 19, Covid-19, Kickstarter, Koob, Legacy Bookbindery, life, pandemic, St. Cybi's Well, writing

As I noted a couple of months ago, I found a printer to produce the pages for a hand-bound copy of St Cybi’s Well. This is a photo-essay of the process of turning those pages into finished books. This is not intended to be actual instruction on how to bind books.

My printer for Communion of Dreams had been bought-out and was no longer capable of doing the printing for St Cybi’s Well. I was able to source a new printer after some trouble. Everything was slowed down due to Covid, of course. Eventually I was able to drive over to Wichita KS to pick up the printed pages.

Printed pages and color cover stock. Note that these are oversize. This is necessary to make sure the ‘grain’ of the paper runs the correct way, so that the pages will turn properly once the book is bound. They get trimmed down after binding.

Each section (group of pages) has to be folded, then punched consistently to allow for sewing.

It’s easier to do the laser-design work on the section before binding. The design is that of the St Melangell Centre, of a hare, at Pennant Melangell. This is the location in the book where much of the action takes place.

Once the individual sections are all punched, they are gathered into books and then sewn. This style of binding is “sewn on tapes”.

Sewn text blocks. Note that these are oversize, using the full printed sheets.

The sewn text blocks, now cut down to finished size. This is done individually, using a c. 1915 guillotine.

I designed a simple thin-board jig using my laser, which allowed me to mark on the cut bookcloth where to mount the archival bookboard.

Completed case, with the edges of bookcloth turned in and additional liners added. Those liners are needed to balance the strain on the boards cause by mounting the color cover stock label.

Exterior of the case, with color cover stock mounted.

Text blocks now lined with support paper along the spine, and endbands added at the head and tail. The outer page of the first and last section has been cut down to function as an additional hinge. This, combined with the sewing tapes, is sufficiently strong to mount the text block to the case covers.

Text blocks mounted into case covers, and allowed to dry under weight.

Finished books. If you look closely you’ll note a slight wedge shape to the text blocks. I wanted a flat spine to match the hand-bound copies of Communion of Dreams, but St Cybi’s Well is longer, and so required more sections. This made the swelling at the spine more noticeable. Once the books are opened and read once or twice, the wedge shape should disappear.

If you would like your own hand-bound copy of St Cybi’s Well or Communion of Dreams, click the links. Each edition is limited to just 53 numbered copies, plus two Artist’s/Author’s proof copies. At either link you can also order one of the remaining copies of the Amazing Koob, as well as signed paperback copies. And of course, you can always download the books from Amazon (remember, they’re free on the first of each month).

That completes the next-to-last phases of my Kickstarter. The final phase will be the design and completion of the leather bindings.

Jim Downey

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A light in the darkness.

September 8, 2018, 2:40 pm
Filed under: Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Connections, Depression, Health, Politics, Predictions, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, U of Iowa Ctr for the Book, Writing stuff | Tags: art, bipolar, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Cheryl Jacobsen, Communion of Dreams, creative process, darkness, depression, Glowforge, goatskin, health, jim downey, Kickstarter, laser, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, literature, manic, mental health, predictions, Robert Funk, Science Fiction, society, St. Cybi's Well, survival, The Gospel of Jesus, The Jesus Seminar, UICB, Westar Institute, writing

It’s … been a while.

And a lot has happened. Mostly good.

* * * * * * *

Many years ago, a friend got involved in something called “The Jesus Seminar“, which eventually produced (among other things) The Gospel of Jesus.

My friend commissioned Cheryl Jacobsen, well-known calligrapher and friend of mine from my UI Center for the Book days, to do a hand-lettered edition of the book as a gift for Robert Funk, the founder of the Seminar. The work was done on calligraphic vellum, and when it was completed, I did the binding. This is it, which I have used as the main image on my business homepage for at least a dozen years:

And here’s the descriptive text from my site:

The Gospel According to Jesus: Full leather contemporary case binding, shown here as tooling is being done. Collaborative work with calligrapher Cheryl Jacobsen of Iowa City. Sewn on linen tabs, cover mounted to text block using adhesive. Covered full in burgundy Chieftain Goatskin, blind tooled using a hot brass folder.

It’s a lovely, but very simple and traditional binding.

* * * * * * *

Continue reading →

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Forward, into the past.

December 30, 2017, 1:19 pm
Filed under: Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Health, Politics, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: art, bipolar, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, brick walk, calfskin, Communion of Dreams, construction, creative process, darkness, depression, goatskin, health, jim downey, Kickstarter, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, literature, manic, mental health, politics, predictions, Science Fiction, society, St. Cybi's Well, survival, Wales, writing

I sewed up a book yesterday.

* * *

It’s been a rough year.

Oh, a good one, in many ways. The delightful trip to Wales was certainly wonderful. And I was pleased to finally wrap up our two-year work on the brick walkway; I recently used it, and it was nice to see how it has settled solidly after a couple of months weather. There have been other highlights, time spent with those I love, sharing & caring.

But it’s been a rough year. Mostly, because back in early spring I started my slow bipolar descent, and then got stuck stumbling along the bottom of my personal trough for the last six weeks or so. And, while I haven’t talked about it (or anything else) much here, the political situation has been extraordinarily depressing. It’s been a weird combination of things I have long dreaded and things I was writing to warn people about in St Cybi’s Well, and after significant effort to re-write the draft of that book to reflect the new political reality I found myself without the energy or inclination to continue. I felt paralyzed.

* * *

But, as these things go if you are lucky, the wheel continued to turn.

Even if the progress is steady, and consistent with my previous personal experience, it’ll be some 4 – 6 months before I completely climb out of the depressive part of my bipolar cycle.

But I sewed up a book yesterday. This one, for the first time in at least a year and a half:

Yeah, it’s one of the premium leather bindings of Communion of Dreams.

Finally.

For whatever reason, completing those books got mixed up emotionally with completing the writing of St Cybi’s Well. I think I understand it, but I don’t think that I can explain it. Well, I understand it now. At least part of it.

That’s how you solve art, sometimes. And how you walk out of depression: one part at a time, one step at a time.

The writing wants to start again.

In the meantime, I sew books.

Happy New Year.

Jim Downey

1 comment

Making an impression.

May 29, 2016, 5:26 pm
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Connections, Failure, Feedback, Humor, Predictions, Publishing, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, calfskin, Communion of Dreams, goatskin, jim downey, Kickstarter, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, literature, Peter Haigh, predictions, Science Fiction, technology, WIlliamson Oak

My, how time flies …

I’m a little startled to discover that it’s been three years since I last posted about doing the leather bindings for the custom edition of Communion of Dreams. No, I know it’s been a while — but I have been giving this binding a lot of thought, so it seems like it was still a recent ‘pending’ project. I liked the idea of using the sewing structure to incorporate classic raised leather cords on the spine of the book, but I just didn’t like the sparseness of the rest of the cover design. The initial tests were OK, but the more I thought about them, the less satisfied I was with what the final product would be. The problem was that while the cords under leather gave a nice tactile effect, there wasn’t enough detail possible.

So I kept trying to figure out how to keep the relief I liked but to get more definition. I won’t go through all the different iterations of ideas I considered, but there were a lot, mostly along the lines of trying different ways of mounting different weights of cord/string or molding/engraving the board under the leather. But each approach failed to give me the definition I wanted. Worse, each one felt further and further removed from the image of the “Williamson Oak” by Peter Haigh I had used for the paperback/printed hardcover/website.

Then recently another bookbinding project got me to thinking about using something like a woodcut as a way to make an impression on a leather cover, and I realized that I had gotten so set on the idea of using the raised cords of the sewing structure as the basis for the rest of the cover texture I hadn’t considered the possibility of impressing the leather rather than trying to raise it. What would be required would be to make a plate which would press down most of the leather, leaving the design I wanted alone so that it would stand up (and out).

So that what I tried today. Here’s how I did a quick test:

That’s my high-tech, fancy “polymer plate” … also known as a plastic cutting board. I did a quick sketch on it with a marker, then carved into it using a couple of different cutting heads on a Dremel tool.

Then I mounted a piece of goatskin and a piece of calfskin onto some bookboard, got it good and damp, and then pressed it quickly in one of my book presses. Here are the results:

This was just a trial to see if my press would generate sufficient pressure, and if the plate would hold up to it. I am very happy with how well they turned out, and I learned what I need to change for the final version (such as smoothing out the surface of the plate, adding more detail and title, and — oh, yeah — reversing the image).

So, progress! Hey, it only took three years for me to get past my perceptual bias … 😉

Jim Downey

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In defense of laziness.

January 3, 2016, 2:01 pm
Filed under: Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Charlie Stross, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, George R.R. Martin, Her Final Year, jim downey, John Bourke, Kickstarter, literature, Neil Gaiman, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Winds of Winter, writing

I started this blog 9 years ago. Well, OK, that isn’t technically true until next Saturday.

That was 1,823 blog posts ago. And something on the order of a million words, give or take about a hundred thousand, according to my best estimates.

During the same time period I wrote another hundred thousand words or so for freelance articles (here, and elsewhere). And 187 blog posts/another 100,000 words here.

In addition, I helped write/compile/edit Her Final Year (which is available for free download today, btw). And rewrote/edited Communion of Dreams (also available for free download today) at least twice.

Oh, and I’ve been working on St Cybi’s Well. Have about a hundred thousand words done on that.

That’s between one and a half and two million words, depending on how you want to figure it.

And saying it that way sounds a bit impressive, and makes me feel better.

Feel better?

Well, see, I haven’t put up a blog post in almost a month.

And only 10 in the last three months.

And St Cybi’s Well was supposed to be finished more than two years ago.

What gives?

I’m not entirely sure. It’s not writer’s block, exactly, since I have been making progress on SCW, all along. For the last few months I have been in a steep downturn in my usual bipolar cycle, but it hasn’t been so bad that it has caused me the sort of depressive lethargy which can be deadly — I’ve actually had a clear mind and have been fairly productive in other aspects of my life.

Perhaps it’s just laziness.

But I’m not lazy. Oh, I mean that I can be lazy, sometimes, but it is just not usually a defining characteristic of my personality.

Perhaps …

… I dunno, perhaps it is just something that happens to authors, sometimes. And that’s OK. Really.

I guess you could call it unprofessional. Un-workmanlike. But let’s go ahead and call it laziness.

You know, like the laziness of everyone who is overweight. They’re too lazy to go to the gym.

Or the laziness of everyone who isn’t rich. Because clearly, they just don’t work hard enough to earn money.

Or the laziness of all those people who don’t do well in school. Hey, a little more effort, and they could have graduated from an ivy league.

Or the laziness of being judgmental, thinking that you know what other people need to do to improve their lives. To meet your expectations.

Oh, wait, that really is lazy. Sorry.

Jim Downey

PS: This isn’t meant in any way to excuse my failure to meet my obligations with my Kickstarter backers. Any such who would like a refund are certainly welcome to it; and for those who continue to tolerate my delay, I will make it up to them when the project is finished.

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