I received some good news on Monday. Amazon will soon be crediting my checking account with the second royalty check from sales of my first book - "The Legacy of Miss Annie Darden Coggins". Actually, it was a combination of good news and bad news, depending on how $10 and change for the past three months can be interpreted. It's better than the proverbial sharp stick in the eye, but considering the hours I put into the book, I'm netting way less than minimum wage.
Actually, I had decided to shift gears so that I can approach this whole "I'm publishing a book for sale" thing in an entirely different way. And yes, I did it before getting my measly royalty check.
Let me reiterate something before I go any further. I had no pretensions about having an avalanche of money falling into my lap when I put my book into circulation back in January. I'd be happier if I had made more, but, I can't have everything. There were some obvious flaws. The title was way too long, the cover wasn't to even a poor professional standard and the formatting was wrong. Very wrong.
After several conversations, I decided to withdraw the book from Amazon's Kindle Direct program, have it edited, re-title it and commission a decent cover before deciding where I will release it next.
In the meantime, being emboldened by favorable remarks from various quarters, I have moved apace on two other projects which I want to release at the same time as the re-release of my first book.
One of the projects is a follow-up book with the working title "The Magnolia Chronicles". I am in the process of melding story elements into a single narrative. I got lost for a while over the past couple of months, but now I'm to the point where I can actually say that I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sprinting ahead on the deal.
The other project I'm calling "Brushes with Fame". It will consist of two novellas. One, "Whatever Happened to Suddsy Watters?" is 95% ready for publication. The story is locked, edited and ready to go. The other part of the novella, "Goodbye to All That" is coming along nicely. "Suddsy" is a salute to those kiddie show hosts many of us grew up with back in the '60's and the '70's - "Goodbye" involves an over-enthusiastic fan quite accidentally meeting and dating a former television personality. The story, so far, works.
Anyhoo, I have lots to do now that I've taken care of some personal business and can free up the time to get these projects completed. I did notice today that I have spent waaaayyyy too much time on that internet back fence called Facebook these past couple of days and so have decided to take a short hiatus from that particular channel. I'll wrap up the word games I have going, but that will be about it for the next couple of weeks. I'll deal with personal messages which seep over onto my regular e-mail account, but, that'll be about it. No insults intended - I hope none taken.
I will blog now and again.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
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