What have I done?

Had I had this blog up and running sooner, I would have given the blow-by-blow on finding someone to print the book, etc. Now that that's history, I'll hold off unless someone specifically asks about it.

Instead, I'll do a quick recap of what I've done to promote the book up until now. I've put together a website for it at http://www.shopping-cart-man.com/. (Can you believe that shoppingcartman.com and theshoppingcartman.com were already taken?) BTW, you can read the first first few chapters on that site.

I arranged for and participated in a radio interview with Donna Max on the "Talk of the Town" radio program on KSTAR 1400 am. That went ok. It wasn't stunning, just ok. She read the book beforehand and REALLY liked it. I think the problem was I didn't come up with a good set of questions or key points to be made. Donna did a good job, considering the limited info I'd given her.

I had the company that printed my book print off some posters and a few hundred bookmarks. The bookmarks are great for handing out at booksignings or leaving next to the register for customers to take. That way, if they don't buy the book on the spot, they can have something to remind them of it.

I did booksignings on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. Signings can be fun, if people stop and chat for a while, but they can be killers otherwise. As I sat there watching people walk by and hoping some would stop, I think I gained a SMALL inkling of what a girl at a dance must feel like. It's certainly not an ego-booster.

If someone looked like they might be interested, I’d offer to tell them about it, otherwise, I didn’t pester them. These efforts met with minimal success. I think I sold about 1 book per hour. Hardly worth the time invested, BUT if it helps word get out and they start spreading the news that there’s a good book out there that their friends would like, then it’s a good investment. It’s much too late to be in any Christmas catalogs and I can’t afford much publicity, so I really need some sort of grass roots, word-of-mouth movement to make this succeed. Unfortunately, that probably means doing several more signings…

Well, what would you do?

So, what's this blog for anyway? I'm planning to dedicate this blog to my writing efforts. I've had a lot of people ask what it's like to write a book and get it out to market and so forth. (I can comfortably say that the easiest part is writing. Getting it published - and noticed - is much more taxing and difficult.)

I've got several writing projects. Most of them were just for fun, but several were instructional (such as a Norwegian grammar quick reference book I put together years ago). Up until recently, I had one novel in print (The Title of Liberty, which is a novelization of the Captain Moroni and Stripling Warriors saga). That book has been available in many bookstores, including Deseret Book, Seagull Books, Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, etc.

Last year, I met the Hill Brothers who were selling a timeline of the Book of Mormon in the University Mall, in Orem, Utah. It was one of those temporary stores that is rented just for the Christmas season. They agreed to sell "Title" there as well. They also agreed to let me do some book signings. This was a major step for me because Deseret and Seagull - although they were selling my book - would not let me do booksignings in their stores. It seemed to me that ultimately the reason was because I was not published by their publishing companies.

When everything was said and done, the Hill Brothers found that their sales doubled or tripled when I (or others) were there doing signings. It increased traffic for them, which increased sales. This year, they gave me a call and asked if I wanted to sell "Title" with them again. They also asked if I "had anything else" that I could sell there.

It turns out that I had a Christmas novel that I've been working on called, "The Shopping Cart Man". I hadn't planned on doing anything with it until next year, though, because I knew I'd missed all of the publishers' deadlines for this year. I wasn't even trying to meet their deadlines. I was just writing it and enjoying that. I figured I'd simply hold off on getting it "published" until next year.

Well, with the opportunity to have it sold in a store in the mall, that is in a prime location (across from Deseret Book), and have salespeople willing to push it, I figured "Why not?" I decided to do a small run of the book and see how sales went. I could still approach publishers with it next year. With any luck, word of mouth would spread about the book and maybe it would get noticed.

So, although I had vowed I wouldn't self-publish, I went ahead and did so anyway. Now, I'm in the throes of self-promoting the work. THAT'S the part that's a killer.

In case there are any other writers out there bold enough to try the same route, I'll share some of my experiences so you can get ideas of what to try and what to avoid. One thing I've learned is that there aren't many strangers out there rooting for you to succeed - friends and relatives will give much-needed encouragement - but those who don't know you will seldom see a need to open doors for you. There's an awful lot of self-promotion and persistence that need to take place. It's not an activity for the shy or timid...

Sheese! Am I behind...

One thing after another has combined to put me way behind in getting any more posts made...

First, for whatever reason, I couldn't get logged back in. Being the Thanksgiving break, I've been at home since Wednesday. My hard drive died. It wasn't a virus. It was mechanical. Taking it to a friend who is hardware savvy, he took it apart and showed me that the motor has fused. The cylinder won't spin. No data recovery.

I told my other friend about it and he said, "sounds like a classic case-study for FileShuttle.com". That's an online data synchronization service we use. All of my data files are in that system. All I have to do is buy a new harddrive, log in, and my data will come back. Fortunately, it's all on my laptop too.

But, that wasn't the end of it. It turns out that my hard drive is not the standard type. I bought a replacement that was on sale, but can't install it because my machine is set up for this kind that has a smaller plug (about the width of my fingernail).

Meanwhile, my router seems to have also died. I can now get connectivity, but I can't connect wirelessly.

So, between those woes and Thanksgiving, I've been somewhat delayed. I'll play some catchup, but right now, I'm just glad to have been able to log in...

The Lines of Our Times...

Not that any blog-reader is particularly interested in me, so much as they might be in what I write, I'll simply point out that I was an Air Force brat. By the time I was 7, I'd lived in two countries and 4 States. Now, some 30+ years later, nothing has been added. I've still lived in those same 2 countries and 4 States - including going back to live in the overseas country where I was born, for a time.

However, I have done some traveling in my day. I believe I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean 15 times. Though I've been to Hawaii, I've never crossed the entire Pacific Ocean. I once tallied the number of countries I've visited. It's somewhere around two dozen.

Of all the things I could blog about, perhaps the one most interesting is my hobby. I like to write. Occasionally, people even like to read what I write. Of the many things I've written, two have now found themselves "in print". (OK, three if you want to count a poem I wrote when I was 10, and my mom sent into the "Children's Friend"...)

The first was a novel called, "The Title of Liberty" which was published in 2003. The second is a new Christmas novel coming out RIGHT NOW called, "The Shopping Cart Man". It's about a family that helps a homeless man during the holidays. If there's interest in hearing of the struggles and triumphs (hopefully) of a self-publishing effort (this new novel), I can blog on that...

See you in the ethernet!

Doug