Why Your Book Deserves a Business Plan

Why are you writing a book? You want it to be read, right? If that isn't your goal, then you can stop reading now. But if you do want to sell books, there is something you can do to help get them into the hands (or e-readers) of your target audience. Create a book business plan. While CreateSpace, the darling of Amazon, advises that a business plan be developed after the manuscript is written, you will be better served by working on a plan as soon as you come up with a book idea. If you have already begun writing the book, don’t give up on a business plan. The plan can be beneficial at any point, but the sooner you work on it, the better it can assist you.

The business plan enables you to look at your book as a business, and not just a creative exercise. No matter how you decide to publish, a book is a product that needs to be sold. The plan can help you determine if your book idea can actually sell. It will also help keep you focused on your reader and target market.

The key points of a book business plan include honing in on what your book is about; determining who your target market is; conducting market research; exploring publishing options; estimating resources needed to complete and market your book; and examining distribution, promotion and sales channels. Let's look at each of these.

1) What is your book about? You must be able to describe this succinctly.

2) Who is your target market? It is not “everybody”! Not a book has been written that absolutely everyone wants to read. Is your audience male, female, both? Children? What age range? Fiction or nonfiction? You need to know who you are writing for in order to appeal to them as buyers.

3) Market research will help you identify what competition exists for your book. What makes your book different from what is already out there?

4) How do you intend to get published? Will you approach a traditional publishing company? Does your subject matter lend itself to local or regional publishing houses, or university presses? Or are you going to set up an independent publishing company? How you answer this question may influence the way your book is written.

5) It is important to know how much it will cost to publish your book. While a traditional publisher may cover all of the expenses involved in getting a book into the marketplace, other options may require you to pay some or all of the expenses. You will need to think about the costs involved for editing, book design, printing and/or ebook development, and marketing expenses. These all add up quickly, and knowing what you will have to pay out of pocket can help you determine if the book makes sense from an economic standpoint.

6) What is the best way to get your book into the hands of your target audience? You need to have a plan for marketing and distributing the book. Where does your target market shop? Retail stores? Specialty stores? Online? This goes back to having a clearly defined answer to number 2 above. Don’t forget the power of your own networks - family, friends, co-workers, and all of your contacts on social media.

Once complete, have other people review your business plan. They may have suggestions and ideas you haven't considered. And remember that the plan isn't set in stone. It will evolve along the way. Give your book its best chance for success by developing a business plan!

Creating a Photo Book

Old Chain of Rocks Bridge

In 2014 the St. Louis region celebrated the 250th birthday of the City of St. Louis. A major portion of the festivities involved the placement of 250 (plus a few to grow on) fiberglass birthday cakes around the area. Painted by local artists, the cakes were placed primarily in locations of historical significance. The Cakeway to the West adventure was part scavenger hunt and part history lesson. It took me to places in the St. Louis area that I never knew existed as well as locations I had heard about but never visited. At the end of the journey, over 4,000 photographs had taken up residence on my hard drive, and three of them ended up in a juried art show! I knew that I wanted to put together a book that would have one cake on each page, meaning I was looking at printing a 250+ page, full-color book.

The online print on demand companies such as Amazon's CreateSpace or Lightning Source have gotten poor marks for the quality of color photos in their books. There are, however, numerous options for producing photo books online. They are mostly designed for casual photographers who want to turn their photos into a keepsake book - not one that they intend to sell. While these services produce photo books you can be proud of, they are an extremely expensive option. Most of them have page limitations that ruled them out for this project. I put together a comparison of the most popular companies.

photo book comparison  

From the illustration you can see that there was only one company that was capable of producing the desired number of pages for my book. With Blurb, you can either produce your book online, which is how the other services work, or you can download their software and work on the book on your computer directly. While I have used both Shutterfly and Snapfish in the past, I have never worked with Blurb before. I tried both their online service as well as the software, and I never quite got the hang of either one of them. Trying to add additional text boxes or photos to the pages was difficult, at least for me. In the end I decided that because this project was so immense, I did not want to take the time for the learning curve Blurb was presenting. I do know other people who have used the service and have seen some of their books, and Blurb does offer a high quality product.

I went with Snapfish due to the fact that they offer a maximum of 150 pages, so I knew I could get my book done in two volumes. Both volumes are now complete, and I have received Volume I. The book looks great, and I am pleased with the result. If you are looking to create a photo book of your own adventures, there are some good choices available for you.

Cakeway to the West book cover

Cakeway to the West interior page

Cakeway to the West interior page

Publishing Your Own Book

Kim Wolterman kicks off the class

The St. Louis Publishers Association (SLPA) offers a book publishing class through our local community college once or twice a year. I usually organize the class and then serve as the moderator, also throwing in my two cents worth when warranted. Our most recent class was a full house, with thirty writers signed up. I like to ask each person to give their name and a short sentence or two on what they are writing about before the class gets started. I think it is fun to see the genres people are writing about, and it also offers an opportunity for folks to connect with other attendees who might be writing about a similar topic.

Over the course of four hours we cover traditional versus independent publishing, getting your book into print, book design, ebooks and how to get your book into the marketplace. It is a lot of material to cover in the short amount of time we have, but the purpose is to give an overview of the whole process of what to do once you have written your book. From our perspective as an organization, we want to make sure that authors know about our monthly meetings. All of the topics covered in the class, and more, are discussed throughout the year. For all of us, the SLPA was the place where we learned what to do next and made the connections to get the steps done. If you are a writer, check to see if there is a publishers association in your area. The help and support you receive will be invaluable.

City Corner Update

The show that we taped about book writing and publishing has not aired yet. However they do have the YouTube video posted. Here is the City Corner episode. Enjoy!

Write On

Murdock Mansion

As mentioned in the past, I have been struggling with my next writing project. I guess the main problem is that there are several projects that I have been working on, but I am not sure any of them is worthy of being made into a book. Yes, that nay-saying critic on my shoulder has been working overtime. As my mind turns towards 2014 and what I would like to accomplish, I realize I need to focus on one thing. But which one to choose?

And then it came to me as I was reading an article about the celebrations that will be taking place in St. Louis next year. The city will be 250 years old in 2014! (If you are interested, here is the website about all the activities that will be taking place.) They say timing is everything with a book launch, so wouldn't it be great to have a book about John J. Murdock ready to go next year? After all, he is a true rags to riches to rags story. He came to St. Louis as a young man and rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers in the city at that time. His business as an auctioneer and investments in downtown real estate certainly influenced the history of the city.

This is my public declaration that 2014 will be the year of John Murdock. All of my attention will be focused on researching him, his business and the land he owned in St. Louis County. At the end of the day, will there be enough information for a book? I don't know at the moment. But at the least I can write an in depth article about the man and the myths surrounding him. Wish me luck!

Writing Family History

Saturday I attended an all day workshop on writing your family history. The St. Louis Genealogical Society offered the class, and the woman who taught it expressed surprise when I arrived. "What are you doing here?" She is aware that I have authored other books, but as I said to her I have never written a family history. Unlike a memoir where you can draw upon your own experiences, memories and stories, writing about people you have never met presents a challenge for me. How do you take the mundane statistics of birth, marriage, death, etc. and turn it into something people will want to read? Because if no one wants to read it, then what is the point?

Unfortunately that wasn't covered on Saturday. It was mostly about the physical structure of your family history book in terms of how it will look. I learned a bit about formatting, printing, building an audience, etc., so I am glad that I attended the workshop. But I need to know more about the actual writing process so that the book will be an enjoyable read. Most of the people at the meeting were only concerned about getting a book put together with all of their collected data so that they can share it with family members. I know how much work goes into getting a book into print, so I would like to make mine something more than so and so begat so and so. I think looking at examples of some family histories will be of benefit to me, so that is my next step.

A 1912 Travel Journal

Elsie Metz Travel Journal

My second cousin Joe Metz in Cincinnati received a call out of the blue one day last fall. A woman on the phone mentioned that she had an old travel journal written by Elsie Metz. It had been in the possession of a friend of hers who had died. The friend had been married to a Metz but they had no children to leave the journal with. As this woman didn't want to just throw it away, she went to the Internet and started looking for people in the Cincinnati area researching the name of Metz. She contacted Joe and he said of course he would take the journal. They arranged a meeting and she gave him the book.

Joe's intent is to give the journal to the Cincinnati History Museum with the understanding that they will scan it and then give scanned copies to him, me and the University of Cincinnati where Elsie received her college degrees. One of our other cousins works there, so he feels his request will be honored. I, on the other hand, am a little more skeptical. What if they decide it is not worthy of wasting their resources on? What if they don't give us a scanned copy? So I asked Joe if he would consider letting me take the journal back to St. Louis so that I could scan it. We met over President's weekend when I went to Cincinnati, and I have since scanned the journal. I will now return the original to him. I have not taken the time to read it completely through, but Elsie boarded the USS Cincinnati (and how ironic is that?) in January 30, 1912 in New York, and returned to that same city on May 20, 1912. What an adventure that must have been!

I am interested in this story for a number of reasons. Elsie was born in 1880, and was awarded a Liberal Arts Degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1902. She was selected to receive the Teaching Fellowship in Modern Languages there in 1903. How unusual for a woman to go to college back then, particularly at an institution that was not exclusively female. She went on to get a Master of Arts degree from the same institution in 1913. She was very well traveled as I can see not only from this journal but also passport applications and ship passenger lists. I knew of at least five times that she traveled by ship.

Once I read the journal I can determine if she has a story to tell - or maybe I should say one for me to tell. Wouldn't it be amazing to retrace her steps from 1912 and compare my travels to hers from over 100 years ago?

Researching House History Presentation

Today was my presentation at The Heights on how to research the history of a home. I arrived an hour early because I have a phobia that the electronic equipment will not work and I'll be stuck with a poor presentation. While some talks can be handled with no visual aids, this particular one would be very difficult to do without my slides. The first words out of the tech guy's mouth were that he could not find the cord to connect their projector to my laptop. Words to warm every presenter's heart. He ended up finding a different projector and we went to work connecting the two machines. I normally work with a Mac, but most facilities do not own the cord to connect a Mac to their projector, so I brought Jim's PC laptop along. We finally got the two machines to talk to each other, but the full slide would not show up on the big screen even though it was full screen on the PC. While the situation was not ideal, I could make do with it if I had to in a pinch. Fortunately someone in the audience suggested that I press Control, F7. Sure enough, that did the trick! And I was ready to go 10 minutes early.

There were only about 10 people in the audience, which was a little disappointing. As Jim pointed out, it takes as much work to prepare for an audience of 10 as an audience of 1,000. (Well, except for running all the handouts!) But those who did attend were very engaged and had a few suggestions on resources they had used in researching their homes that I had not even considered. Plus I sold 3 copies of my book, and considering that 2 of the people in the room already had it that is not too bad. I am hoping that I can do more of these presentations because I really enjoyed it.

As an update to the CreateSpace debate, both the books I processed through CS are now live and available on Amazon. Woo, hoo!

CreateSpace Part Three

From Buckeye to G.I. cover

On Saturday I received the proof of From Buckeye to G.I. from CreateSpace. The first thing I noticed was the color and trim of the cover. The color was a little lighter than the original book, but I actually like it better. And they managed to trim the cover so that the border is equal around all four sides - something that Lightning Source seemed unable to accomplish. So far, so good. Then I opened up the book and found the pictures, illustrations and even the text of the book to be considerably lighter than they appear in the original book. I already have a challenge with the photos and illustrations due to the fact that the scanned documents were over 50 years old. I don't need the printing to add to the problem.

I contacted CreateSpace on Sunday to inquire about the issue. Today I received a response that basically said there is nothing they can change, and perhaps I need to rescan all my documents to a higher resolution and resubmit the book. Since there are 144 of them in the book, there is no way I am doing what they suggest. They were all originally scanned at 300 dpi, which is acceptable for printing. Funny how Lightning Source didn't seem to have any problems with them.

So the question is, am I being too picky about this? Is it sort of like the television sets at Best Buy, where you can definitely tell the difference in resolution when you see them all side by side but when you get yours home it looks perfectly fine? I think I will have some other people take a look at the book to get some impartial feedback.

CreateSpace Part Two

After I wrote the last post I received an email from CreateSpace indicating that there was a problem with my book cover. Here is what they said:

The cover contains transparency which is flattened during our processing and may result in a slight change in appearance.
The cover contains images that are less than 200 DPI which may appear blurry or pixelated when printed. For more information on image resolution, please visit: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp?orgId=00D300000001Sh9&id=50170000000Irmr
The cover contained spine text that has been removed as we cannot accommodate the inclusion of spine text for books with less than 101 pages as the text will likely wrap to the front or back cover. We recommend you review a physical proof of your book to ensure you are satisfied with the adjustments made. Otherwise, you may remove the spine text on your original file and resubmit it for publishing.

Because I had worked with a professional book designer on both the interior and cover designs for my book, I was pretty surprised that they said an image on the cover was less than 200 DPI. And I was a bit concerned that they had removed the text from the book spine, mostly because I was worried about what it would look like. Did they leave the graphic (for lack of a better word) that was under the text? Or did they replace the spine with a solid color? I shot off an email to CreateSpace regarding the spine, and I had a response in less than 24 hours. Essentially they leave the spine just like you sent it to them; they simply remove the text. With that reassurance, I ordered a proof yesterday. (You can view on online proof at no charge right away, but that doesn't give you any idea about the actual printing quality.) Last evening I received an email that the proof had been mailed to me. The cost of seeing a print proof was $2.15 plus $3.59 for shipping. The local printer who did my first run of books charged me $35 for set-up and a proof, and the unit price per book was higher as well.

From Buckeye to G.I. book cover

While I was on a roll with CreateSpace I decided to go ahead and submit From Buckeye to G.I. LeRoy C. Kubler The War Years, 1942-1945. Originally I went through Lightning Source for this book because they could print the books out as they were ordered, and I wouldn't need to keep a bunch of books at my house. Also they have an expanded distribution system and can supply books to Amazon, among other places. However Amazon doesn't work that well with Lightning Source (or other competitors), and in my case the book always shows a 1 to 2 week shipping date. In this day and age of immediate gratification, most people will just move on to the next book rather than wait.

I received a couple of minor error messages on formatting (shame on you, my original book designer who set it up this way), but with Adobe Acrobat Pro I was able to correct them myself. Then I resubmitted the PDF and got an approval back from CreateSpace. I ordered a proof copy, which was the same price as my other book, and it was put in the mail to me today. In summary, I would say that my experience with CreateSpace has been quite favorable so far. But let's see what the proofs look like - as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Or perhaps I should say the pudding is in the proof?

My Next Book?

1868 Map of St. Louis County

Over on my personal blog I have been writing about the fact that I am researching a house in Shrewsbury, Missouri. The land that the house is located on, and in fact all of Shrewsbury itself, was once Murdock (or Murdoch) Farm. What little has been written about John J. Murdock always states that he was a general in the Civil War. This, of course, makes for a good story. But being a genealogist first and a house researcher second, I have been trying to find records that prove Murdock was indeed a general. So far, after thorough research, I can't even find him fighting in the Civil War at all much less as an officer. I am now on a mission to debunk the "general" theory.

So why I am talking about this over on this blog? Well, John Murdock has kind of grabbed me by the throat. He is mine now, and his family tree sits beside my own on my ancestry.com site. I have found that he was quite an influential man in early St. Louis history. He has a fascinating story, even without the "general" status. Is there enough for a book, or will there be when I am done with my research? And more importantly as a publisher, will anyone care enough to buy the book? Can I sell enough copies to recoup my costs? All good questions that require answers.

Show Me the Blogged Book

A while back I was asked by Danyelle Little, aka The Cubicle Chick, to be a speaker at the Show Me the Blog conference in October. I can't believe I have not blogged about this before now. I think it is because speakers were offered a badge to put on their websites to show that they are speaking at this event, and I have yet to be able to figure out how to get Blogger to accept the badge. Techy, I am not! Obviously I was able to figure out how to copy and paste the image here, but it's not quite the same thing.

At any rate, as someone who has attended the past two Show Me the Blog meetings (you can find my review of last year's sessions here) and been blown away by all the great information imparted, I was thrilled to be asked to present. Danyelle would like for me to talk about how to turn a blog into a book. While I haven't precisely taken what I have blogged about and published it into a book, I did begin to blog about my book's topic (how to research the history of a house) before my first book was written. And I certainly know a lot about book publishing by this point. I think I have a lot to share, and am excited for this wonderful opportunity.

You can find my Featured Speaker interview with Danyelle here.

Game On

My cousin Tony Meale began writing a non-fiction book last summer. Over the past ten months or so we have talked, emailed and facebooked about the writing process, setting up a publishing company, layout and design, printing and distribution of books. Now all of his work has paid off and his book launch is on Sunday. I feel like a proud momma! I wasn't sure it was going to work out, but the stars have aligned and I will be driving over to Cincinnati early Sunday morning to take part in the festivities.

What is amazing to me is that he has already had two radio interviews, one television interview that will air on the night time news in Cincinnati (one half tonight and one half tomorrow night, no less!) and a news station in Florida has interviewed one of the basketball players who appears on the cover of Tony's book. The video of the interview is online along with a mention of where you can buy the book. Why all the interest in a book written by a 27 year-old first time author? You see, Tony's book is called The Chosen Ones with the subtitle The Team That Beat LeBron. It is about the only Ohio high school team to ever beat LeBron James, and at the state championships no less. It has been ten years since the upset, but people in Ohio still remember the game. The fact that the book releases on Sunday, the day after the last game of the Eastern Conference finals in which LeBron will play a key role, is no coincidence. Tony has planned his marketing campaign well.

The Chosen Ones

From day one I felt that this book had the potential to sell really well, outside of the friends, family and high school alumni folks with a vested interest in the project. I knew that Tony would be thorough in his research, and that it would be well written. Now it appears as though the press is excited about the book, too. I am so thrilled for him! If you would like to learn more about The Chosen Ones, go to http://www.thechosenonesthebook.com/

Feeling Challenged

We are in the final leg of the family history writing challenge. It officially ends on the 29th, but I hope that the forum will remain open so that we can keep in touch. It has been fun getting to know the other family historians. I am pretty pleased with where I am in the process. My biggest hurdle will be making the information sound interesting. Several people in the forum have suggested books that might help in that regard. There was a list of family histories of all shapes and sizes. I purchased Oh Beautiful by John Paul Godges upon the recommendation of several people in the group. It is a compelling read so far, and hopefully will give me some ideas on the way I want to approach my story.

To Publish or Not to Publish...That is the Question

This morning I had a meeting with clients to discuss a book that they are just beginning to write. For the time being, I am functioning in the role of book coach. I told them, as I would advise anyone who wants to write a book, that they need to first determine who the audience is for the book. (And PLEASE don't tell me that the book is for "everybody"! There are very few books, especially non-fiction, that will appeal to everybody.) Until you determine who is going to read your book, you really don't know the correct way to write the book. So that is a huge hurdle right from the get-go. But I think they are up for the task. In the meantime, they have a public relations firm who will be looking at existing books in the market to see who is their competition.

The conversation made its way around to the publishing aspect. Like most authors they would like to go with a traditional publishing company. However the nature of their topic is fairly time-sensitive, in their case meaning others will probably be getting similar books out sooner rather than later. I told them that even if a traditional publisher picked them up, the book would not be out for 1-2 years after they submit the manuscript. That is not an option, really, unless an educational publisher has a quicker turn around time. I offered to publish the book under my company name. I have considered doing books by other authors in the past, but it really comes down to the contractual arrangement. Who pays for what? Who handles distribution? What about the marketing? How are the sales split? These are all things that would need to be resolved. I also would probably want to pick up some liability insurance coverage as well, since I could be sued along with the authors if something is awry in the book. There are lots of things to think about.

Having said that, I think it would be exciting to publish a book for someone else. It would also add more credibility to my publishing company. For right now, I am just going to enjoy helping these two authors make their dream a reality.

Book Roundup

As the end of the year approaches (!) I am trying to get a handle on the Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? books I have out on consignment. The St. Louis Genealogical Society has had 5 of the books since day one and I have received no payment from them. The weekend before last when I was in their office I noticed that only 2 books remain on the shelf. Have they sold 3? My neighbor bought 1 there, so I know I am owed for at least that book. The lady in charge of the shop is a little hard to get in contact with, so I have sent her an email and hope to hear back from her soon.

The Webster Groves Historical Society is the easiest to deal with. They had sold 3 more copies of the book, so I went over there yesterday and was paid in cash for those. While I was there, a local woman was looking through the original Webster Groves tax books in an attempt to research the history of her home. She has checked my book out of the library a couple of times, so she was familiar with me. I gave her a few pointers on other places to look. It was a little disconcerting to hear her say that our library told her they have nothing except my book (yay!) and a CD with a spreadsheet on it listing some of the tax payments. There is so much more at the library than that! When our library renovation is complete I definitely want to schedule a session on how to research the history of your home.

The current president of the historical society asked me (again) to serve on their board. Unfortunately their board meeting conflicts with the St. Louis Publishers Association meetings, so I just can't do it. I told her (again) that I would really like to work with the archivist in organizing the historical society collection. No one knows exactly what we have, which is a shame. That is when she told me that the archivist left this summer to move to Oklahoma. She then wanted to know if I would take over. I explained that I am not an archivist - I am quite sure there are things one should know about handling and storing the old records. (Such as the fact that our original real estate tax records dating back to 1897 should not be on metal shelves close to the floor in an old building!) I really would love to help, but I am a bit concerned that if I step forward I will be biting off way more than I want to chew. I'll have to do a lot of thinking on that.

Today will head over to Puddn'head Books. The last time I was in there they were getting ready to move across the street, so we decided that I would bring more books over after the move. At that time they only had one book left on the shelf and I had given her 9 the time before. So I will be looking to collect some money there as well.

All of this points to one of the biggest drawbacks of self-publishing. In addition to being the author and the publisher, you also become your own distributor - at least in St. Louis where the one distributor was driven out of business when Borders collapsed. This means you have to be responsible for getting your books out in the market, tracking them and collecting payments. Definitely not the fun part of the job.

Keys to Unlocking House History Revisited

Keys to Unlocking House History has been available on smashwords.com and through a link on my website for over four months now. The book can be purchased through them for the Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, the Sony readers, Palm readers, in PDF format to be read on the computer - pretty much everything out there right now. There have been 27 downloads of the preview and 0 sales so far. Smashwords distributes the ebooks to virtually everyone except Amazon, who has refused to play nicely with others in the publishing sandbox. So I have made a couple of changes. First of all I reduced the price from $4.99 to $2.99. Then I changed my distribution on smashwords.com to eliminate their distribution to Amazon. (I kept hearing that an agreement between the two was imminent, but it has yet to materialize.)

Then I went to Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon's own book publishing arm and set up an account. I uploaded Keys to Unlocking House History and in a little over one day the book was available in the Kindle Store on Amazon. Since I now have this account with books for sale on Amazon, I headed over to their Author's Corner and set up a profile for myself. I was able to add Keys to Unlocking House History and From Buckeye to G.I. to my profile, but not Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed(room)? I have not sold that book through Amazon, so I figured that was the problem.

I filled out a help request form and was given the option of having someone call me. I barely hit the send button before my phone was ringing. An extremely helpful woman named Theresa went over all three books with me, adding the correct subject areas and search terms to each of the books. She mentioned that Who's Been Sleeping is only available on Amazon if/when a third party puts it up for sale. I asked how we could get around that, and she said she would email me information on their Advantage program. As I understand it, I would send books to Amazon and they would sell them and mail the copies out to the purchaser. So that is something I will need to look into, and I'll probably talk to some of my publisher friends to see how successful this program is since I believe there are fees involved. In the meantime though, kudos to Amazon for an amazing customer service experience today!

The Price is Right

After discussing my book price with my representative at Lightning Source (LSI), as well as showing the proof to a couple of established authors, I decided to leave the book price at $9.95 for right now. As one author pointed out, I will be discounting the book 55% for all wholesale outlets, so I need to make sure I make something off of each book once the printing costs are taken into consideration. Not to mention trying to recoup the cost of layout and design fees. My Lightning Source rep said he is very interested in WWII history, and because this book is high quality, he would not hesitate to pay $9.95 for it. (Hope he puts his money where his mouth is!)

The next decision I had to make was how many copies to order for myself. I get the books greatly discounted from LSI, in fact much less than I anticipated. I know I could not have gotten them printed in St. Louis for this price. I decided to start with an order of 20 copies since I had to pay for postage and it wasn't that much more to ship 20 than to ship 10. I know I will easily sell 10 to my family members, and I will be marketing the books to some Cincinnati retail outlets as well. I also need to mail one copy to the Library of Congress as required by my application for a Library of Congress number.

With regards to my smashwords.com account and my ebook Keys to Unlocking House History, I am still waiting to be approved for the premium catalog. Normally this takes two weeks, and I resubmitted for inclusion on June 15th. I was hoping that since this was a re-submission and that I hired a designer familiar with smashwords to make the changes, I would breeze through a second time. Apparently not.

How Much is Too Much?

Well, the proof of my dad's book arrived yesterday at 5:15, thanks to my trusty UPS man in brown. My first impression was, "Man this box is small!" My second was, "Man this book is small!" After a quick glance at the cover (which looks great!), I had to set the book aside because I was in the middle of an online chat with my daughter in Prague. After that I had to prepare supper, eat and do the clean up. Then I sat down to look at the book. I am seriously concerned that I have priced the book too high at $9.95.

Before deciding on a price I went to the bookstore to look at other books in this genre and of a similar size. Most of them carried a higher price tag. I also knew what my expenses were on the book, except for the price that Lightning Source will charge me to buy my own. I also know how much time I put into scanning documents, doing the research, and writing the book. There are some fantastic historical documents that appear in the book, and some of them can't be found anywhere else. The price seemed fair at the time. But now when I look at the size, I am not so sure that people will be willing to pay that much for it.

It is not a done deal yet. I could send the book back to the designer, and she could modify the price that is listed on the order form inside the book as well as in the bar code on the back cover. This, of course, would incur additional expenses. Or I could try the book at this price and if it doesn't sell, then make the changes. And any books I sell myself can obviously be sold at whatever price I want. I could make the audience feel that I am giving them a real break. I think I will bounce the whole price thing off of some other authors and book sellers before I make a decision.

Progress

Today I received the revised copy of Keys to Unlocking House History from my Smashwords formatting wizardess, along with an invoice for $20. Really? I spent more than $20 trying to decipher the Smashwords manual. I know who is getting all of my future ebooks for formatting. I uploaded the revised document to Smashwords and it flew right through the first acceptance level. Hopefully this will put the book on a fast track to get in their premium catalog.

I also learned today that the proof of From Buckeye to G.I. has been mailed to me, and I should be receiving it tomorrow. I am very excited to see the print quality of Lightning Source, and to learn about their distribution channels. I really don't intend to purchase too many copies for direct sales - probably just enough for my family and perhaps the Delhi Historical Society and veteran's association in Delhi (which is where my father lived). I do wish that I had targeted completion of this book to coincide with Memorial Day. That would have been a good launch day for it. Unlike my house history research book, I am not sure that this book lends itself to speaking engagements. Unless I tailored the presentation to the importance of documenting the stories of the WWII vets before it is too late?