Still Promoting at Conventions I Can't Make

The main reason I went to the Alamo City Comic Convention was because someone I met told me that you can make more money at conventions in Texas than anywhere else.  "Texans will buy anything," he said.  I needed that sort of a break, so I looked into getting a booth at the Alamo City Comic Con.  I chose that one because it's near Austin where my uncle lives, and I've been wanting to show Austin to my girlfriend Jamie for a while now.

When I saw the price of the booths, I was taken aback.  $600.  I looked for a small press area, and there was none.  I looked around at other conventions and it was the same story.  It seems Wondercon is unique in having a small press section for independent artists.  It's really a pity because I can't see us independent authors making back $600 plus all the other expenses.

I tried to get a list of vendors who would be at the event, but the website was never updated with their names.  (It said 'vendor list coming soon' all the way up to two weeks before the event, at which point I stopped looking.)  By this time I already had a plane ticket to Austin and Rotary club talks scheduled for another one of my books, so I just went and got a badge to the convention.

I met several vendors, all of whom said they maybe just barely make their money back, and that it's really about exposure.  I suggested the idea of renting table space from them next year, and a couple of them seemed to like the idea.  One of them called it "sublet renting."  I'm going to try it at that convention.  I'm also going to see about hiring a model to cosplay at the front and hand out flyers, and also offer a giveaway to attendees if they write down their email addresses.  This might be a good way to proxy myself into these conventions that are too expensive for me to go to.

Before I left the convention, I set out a bunch of flyers in the common area.  This only worked slightly as I got five new views the day I put them out, all of them around 7 pm, soon after the convention ended.  So the tiny spike was probably from that, but it wasn't enough to justify going out of my way for it.  I'm really coming to believe that the best solution is anything that involves building the mailing list where I can be certain to personally send people things rather than counting on them to check out my projects.

My Book About the Vietnam War is Getting Delayed

I'm putting together a book about stories of individuals during the Vietnam War.  The original focus of the book was supposed to be South Vietnamese soldiers.  I then started learning the stories of some American soldiers and went those have to be reported.  And more recently I've learned of stories of civilians, in particular the boat people who tried to escape after the North Vietnamese took over.

As I've been learning these stories I've begun feeling a responsibility as an American and as a human being to put together this book.  It's not a book about the politics or whether or not the war was right or wrong, it's about the lives involved in the conflict, what they experienced, and how it affected them.  I really think people need to read about these things.

It's been hard for me to continue sometimes, however.  While I had great hopes for writing nonfiction and getting it out there to the public, after Two Gun's poor sales, my confidence has waned considerably.  It's not the story or the writing; everyone who talks about it loves it.  But despite their enthusiasm for the book, it's barely made any money.  I literally have to go out to Rotary Clubs and tell everyone the story before people buy it.

Added to this is the fact that I've learned over the past year or so that series are what bring in readers to independent books.  You give them the first one for free, get them on a mailing list, then sell them the rest.  You also get it into a niche audience toward which you can direct all your energy.

So I just don't have a huge amount of hope for the success of this book, or any other book that isn't part of a series.  I feel like I need to put more of my time and energy into Relic Worlds.  But this one is too important.

The reason for the Vietnam book's delay is not because of this discouragement.  I am doing it.  However, while I was in Lincoln, I made a bunch more connections, and I want to make sure to collect as many stories and do as much research as I can before putting it together.  When I do, I'll be going through InkShares.  I'll be very interested to see how that goes.

This Year for NanWrimo - Miscellaneous Stuff!

I really like the spirit of NanoWrimo.  Even though it does encourage quantity over quality, it does push a lot of people to get their writing done.  I don't so much need that push, but I know a lot of people do, so it has a good effect.

My intention this NanoWrimo was going to be to write the fifth and final Relic Worlds Pick Your Path book.  It needs to be done by next March, and last year's NanoWrimo book was supposed to be the fourth Pick Your Path book.  But just like last year, things got in the way.  At least it's writing related, though.

Right now I have a whole host of things that need to get written.  I have to prepare the Relic Worlds short stories that are coming out each month.  I had one prepared for this month, but my external hard drive crashed, so I have to write a new one.  I also want to finally get a good chunk my Star Wars fan fiction done before the next Star Wars movie comes out.  Speaking of Star Wars, I also have webisodes of my series RPG Storytime to do, which I'm trying to release the day before Rogue One comes out, so that has to be written as well.  And on top of all that, there is the Pick Your Path book which does need to at least get started.

So this year's NanoWrimo is just all the different writing I need to do.  I'm keeping count of my words and posting them on the NanoWrimo site, but it's really writing from a bunch of different projects.

Pro Bono is in Hardcover

After publishing Pro Bono a number of years ago, I have learned quite a number of stories about incidents surrounding the murders, and the case itself. I collected all of them and added them to the book, then published this new version in hard cover.

This hard cover version is available on Lulu for $25 at: http://www.lulu.com/shop/jeff-mcarthu...

Had an Interesting Interview with Reels

I had a nice interview regarding my book Pro Bono with the Reels channel. They're doing a series of episodes around movies that were based on true stories. The idea in this episode is that Natural Born Killers was based on the story of Starkweather and Fugate.

This is actually not true, as even Oliver Stone said it was inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, and the tale has no similarities whatsoever to the Starkweather-Fugate story. However, we were able to essentially debunk the myth, and tell some true information about the story.

The show is called The Shocking Truth, and it will be on in the spring.

My Book Tour Through The Midwest

I recently returned from a book tour I took through the several states in the center of the country.  They included Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas.

I was mostly speaking at Rotaries, which I've quickly learned are the best resource for public speaking about my nonfiction books.  Rotaries need new speakers every week, so they are often happy to hear from an author who has an interesting story to tell.  It's as helpful for them as it is helpful for the author.

I knew I would be traveling to Nebraska for a few weeks, so I wanted to fill my schedule as much as possible to make the trip worthwhile.  I also knew I would be going down to Texas for the Alamo City Comic Convention, so I filled as much time there as possible.

I started by going to the Rotary Club Finder: https://www.rotary.org/en/search/club-finder

Here you can enter the region and get a list of all the rotaries in that area.  I got their email addresses and wrote to all of them, telling them a quick summary of Two Gun Hart, including the website for the book, and saying when I'll be in the area and that I would like to speak at their club.  I also found the local libraries and made a similar offer.  From the responses I was able to make a schedule of appearances.  There would be 12 in all, 10 rotaries and 2 libraries, plus the convention, which is a different subject because that involves my book series Relic Worlds.

I stayed with my family in Lincoln, Nebraska and set out from there to speak in Omaha, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri.  At these events a little under half of the people bought books, and there were usually about 15 to 20 attendees, so it was decent amounts of money.  In Texas it was hit or miss, either only one or two bought, or almost everyone bought.  Ultimately it turned out to be about the same number.

Basically, the conclusion I came to was that the sales were decent, but when you took into account the amount of time I spent arranging the talks, the flights, the car rental and gas, at best I came close to breaking even.  These were really talks to spread the word.  The problem with this is it's hard to measure it's effectiveness.  Worst of all, people forget things you told them after they leave.

So the best suggestion came from my uncle in Texas who said I should have flyers or bookmarks made up that say the name of this book and other books.  The people who bought books get to see there are others to purchase online, and those who did not buy get flyers to take with them to remind them where to buy them later.

I wish I had thought of that before, but I'll have it in mind now in future events.