A Book About A Blog About A Book?
I once wrote a novel, (initially titled Appalachian Carnival); and to promote
it, I started a blog at the beginning of 2012. My intent was to write about my
quest to publish the book, and about how aspects of the novel had arisen from
my unorthodox notions.
I gave the blog a bi-monthly deadline, the first and fifteenth, and I met that schedule for a year and a quarter. The subjects of several postings were the day of the year itself—the day’s historical and mythological background—April Fools’ Day, May Day, Mardi Gras. Other times, I wrote about the struggle to get the novel published, or I related aspects of the book to the archetypal symbols of the Tarot and the psychology of Carl Jung. Also, I dispatched my opinions—intrinsic to a blog—on politics, religion, people, and places, indulging my satisfaction, amid each spellbound hour, wrapped up in research and composition, mustering my sentences into formation.
Halfway through 2012, I chose to self-publish the novel through Amazon’s CreateSpace, a print-on-demand service; whereupon the blog became a journal of my publishing endeavors. Now and then, I returned to my heretical spiels, varying them with reports on various book promotions.
Each fortnight, I came up with subjects that piqued my interest, and hopefully the interest of my readers as well. Nevertheless, when I found myself, in the spring of 2013, struggling to not repeat what I’d written the year before, I began to wonder if the 35,000 words I’d accumulated thus far had said enough already. Moreover, the blog’s bi-monthly fix to my literary cravings seemed to be stalling the start-up of my next novel. I figured I’d best blog less—even though my website’s numbers for unique visitors and pages viewed had been trending upwards.
As the deadline for my mid-April blog approached, a light bulb lit up in my thought balloon—why not collect these blogs sequentially into an e-book? To upload it to Kindle costs nothing but the time to format it. Opting into Amazon’s KDP Select program, I can give it away on five days of every ninety, and the rest of the time charge as little as 99 cents for it (the lowest price allowed by Kindle). Thus, my blog’s role in promoting Appalachian Carnival might be preserved and extended beyond its initial format. Other than being made more The Fool, what would be my risk?
Born from my penchant for wordplay, a title came to me--A Book About A Blog About A Book—for which I did a google search, and which nobody had. After a few days of putting the existing blogs in sequence and cleaning up their HTML files, I clicked together a Kindle cover. Then, on May Day, 2013, I announced in my blog this book about it, and e-published the e-book.
Within a year or so, I encountered problems with Amazon and the way it does business, so I decided to end our contract—thus deleting my titles from publication. I then revised the novel, retitled it A Fool Rides the Wheel of Fortune, commissioned new art for the cover, and signed up with another print-on-demand service, IngramSpark, to produce three new editions: a hardcover, a paperback, and an EPUB, all published on July 1, 2015. Ingram is the biggest book distributer in the world, dealing with bookstores, libraries, and multiple e-readers—markets diametric to Amazon’s avaricious empire.
For those who may have read my blog during the previous years, I sincerely thank you for your worthy attention. For those who may have come across my digital journal for the first time, I hope you might find interesting this pdf-collection of virtual pages about my barefaced adventure into self-publication and self-promotion—which, like mirrors facing each other on opposite walls, repeatedly reflect the persona of my own self-image.
S.M.F.
To download a free pdf containing the blogs from this website, arranged in the sequence written, click below:
I gave the blog a bi-monthly deadline, the first and fifteenth, and I met that schedule for a year and a quarter. The subjects of several postings were the day of the year itself—the day’s historical and mythological background—April Fools’ Day, May Day, Mardi Gras. Other times, I wrote about the struggle to get the novel published, or I related aspects of the book to the archetypal symbols of the Tarot and the psychology of Carl Jung. Also, I dispatched my opinions—intrinsic to a blog—on politics, religion, people, and places, indulging my satisfaction, amid each spellbound hour, wrapped up in research and composition, mustering my sentences into formation.
Halfway through 2012, I chose to self-publish the novel through Amazon’s CreateSpace, a print-on-demand service; whereupon the blog became a journal of my publishing endeavors. Now and then, I returned to my heretical spiels, varying them with reports on various book promotions.
Each fortnight, I came up with subjects that piqued my interest, and hopefully the interest of my readers as well. Nevertheless, when I found myself, in the spring of 2013, struggling to not repeat what I’d written the year before, I began to wonder if the 35,000 words I’d accumulated thus far had said enough already. Moreover, the blog’s bi-monthly fix to my literary cravings seemed to be stalling the start-up of my next novel. I figured I’d best blog less—even though my website’s numbers for unique visitors and pages viewed had been trending upwards.
As the deadline for my mid-April blog approached, a light bulb lit up in my thought balloon—why not collect these blogs sequentially into an e-book? To upload it to Kindle costs nothing but the time to format it. Opting into Amazon’s KDP Select program, I can give it away on five days of every ninety, and the rest of the time charge as little as 99 cents for it (the lowest price allowed by Kindle). Thus, my blog’s role in promoting Appalachian Carnival might be preserved and extended beyond its initial format. Other than being made more The Fool, what would be my risk?
Born from my penchant for wordplay, a title came to me--A Book About A Blog About A Book—for which I did a google search, and which nobody had. After a few days of putting the existing blogs in sequence and cleaning up their HTML files, I clicked together a Kindle cover. Then, on May Day, 2013, I announced in my blog this book about it, and e-published the e-book.
Within a year or so, I encountered problems with Amazon and the way it does business, so I decided to end our contract—thus deleting my titles from publication. I then revised the novel, retitled it A Fool Rides the Wheel of Fortune, commissioned new art for the cover, and signed up with another print-on-demand service, IngramSpark, to produce three new editions: a hardcover, a paperback, and an EPUB, all published on July 1, 2015. Ingram is the biggest book distributer in the world, dealing with bookstores, libraries, and multiple e-readers—markets diametric to Amazon’s avaricious empire.
For those who may have read my blog during the previous years, I sincerely thank you for your worthy attention. For those who may have come across my digital journal for the first time, I hope you might find interesting this pdf-collection of virtual pages about my barefaced adventure into self-publication and self-promotion—which, like mirrors facing each other on opposite walls, repeatedly reflect the persona of my own self-image.
S.M.F.
To download a free pdf containing the blogs from this website, arranged in the sequence written, click below:
| a_book_about_a_blog_about_a_book_pdf2.pdf |