Though I said at first that I wouldn't put my book
Mission: Faithful into a single digital file, I eventually did just that. You can click on the image to access the free PDF file of
Mission: Faithful. If you want more details of its journey to my blog, read the rest of this post.
Back in the day, as they say, I
wrote my first book, Mission: Faithful. I self-published it, since it is not
the kind of book many publishers, even religious ones, were interested in. Though the book is an action-adventure fiction, the underlying themes are about unity of
Christian denominations and discernment among Christian individuals. Unity has
not seemed to be a priority of denominational publishing houses. Perhaps that will change now that Pope Francis is actively encouraging it.
At the time, Barnes
and Noble was open to promoting local authors, and I am thankful to have had a book signing at
our nearby store. It was attended by friends and relatives, most of whom had already received the book free from me. To say I am not a dynamic
marketer is a vast understatement, and I sold very few. So, I gave several to local
libraries and a few to others and more or less called it quits.
At the time I published the book,
printing businesses had not yet gone to digital publishing. They were using the old
way of making a typeset proof or whatever they called it, and printing from
there. The initial setup costs were high but the printing lower, so the more books you got, the less they
cost each. However, I knew I would probably not sell many, and did it more for
the promotion of the ideas than to make money. I did not want to order a large number. Unfortunately, my husband was of the
“less cost per book” mindset, so we ordered one thousand of them.
I don’t know exactly how many I had left
after my efforts at distribution, but it was a lot. I made room in the basement
for all the boxes and they have been there for a long time. Somehow, this
experience did not dampen my desire to write, and I self-published a fictional
mystery, Unto Others, in 2008. Fortunately, by that time local printing
businesses had acquired digital, print-on-demand capabilities and I ordered 100
paperback copies of Unto Others. I loosely followed the same pattern as
the first book in my marketing, but this time did not have so many left over.
This book also can be found at local libraries. I was not making money on it, but when I occasionally
checked the status in the various library catalogs, I was pleased to find it
was often checked out. At least people were reading it.
In the time since then, the
digital age has truly come upon us, and people are reading books right from the
electronic files. I’ve decided to self-publish my most recent book, Biotech
Swirl, in the ePUB format, and plan for now to keep it at that. Boy, does that
reduce costs! However, since it isn’t in a library, my quandary was whether anyone
would ever hear about this book. It’s on my blog, but this is not a high-volume traffic kind of place.
(2019 Update: I decided to do as I did with Unto Others and get a few books printed. Now they are in a few local libraries and I have given some to friends and family.)
To me writing is not about money. I quote a part of Proverbs (from
NIV). It talks about wisdom being more
valuable than silver, gold and rubies. I remember reading that when I was young
and it somehow stuck. As I get older, I increasingly appreciate and believe the
words. I have a separate image of it here:
Though we might have varying opinions on specific aspects of wisdom, I hope my books are wise, especially in the sense that I try to bring out, through the characters, ways our relationship with God affects our lives. The books are meant, like many fictional stories, to provoke thought about deeper things.
I wrote Mission: Faithful on a
computer program so old that I would have to re-type it to make it available digitally. I
am not planning to spend the time on that, but I have put Unto Others into
accessible digital form. I also have a few non-fiction booklets available on the blog. The names are
lined up as links under the top picture of the blog. You can read and download
any or all of them, which I heartily encourage. (2019 Update: I'm glad to say I finally was able to put this into a single file and it is now on my blog.)
When you talk about
marketing, that is about as high-pressure as I get.
