Tag: Writing

Looking forward while looking back

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Somehow, each year here at the Red Barn has taken on a special spin, despite the merry-go-round sequence of postings, categories, themes, and tags. Or maybe because of that.

While I keep looking forward to “retirement” of some kind, new material for this blog hasn’t let up.

Last year, many of my recorded dreams became a regular presentation, but I’ve run out of those. Previously, prose-poems had their run. Newspaper Traditions are now far in antiquity. And many of my poems are available at my Thistle Finch blog for reading or download. Yet I’m living in a newer, much different, world, lucky me.

Many of this coming year’s postings are shaping up as once-a-week series.

Now that the house renovations are actually happening (Huzzah! Huzzah!), you’ll be seeing that progression on Saturdays. I mean, how many times do you get to watch an old house be torn apart and rebuilt while the residents are still within it? As we were or let me say are.

My week out on Penobscot Bay in a historic schooner provided enough text and photos for a series on Sunday mornings. For me, it’s still dreamy. Hope you see it that way, too.

With a presidential election coming up, I’m returning to a clearer understanding of what’s at stake based on the Federalist papers through excerpts you’ll be seeing on Thursdays. It was that or some childish and more current quips of my own. I see this as more principled.

As a break in my Quaking Dover book reflections, I’m turning to a series looking at what’s behind my published novels. See that in contrast to “what they’re about.” That series of posts is set for Fridays.

Add to that is a series on Mondays, looking at authors who have influenced me one way or another. They’re not necessarily my “favorites,” but definitely ones I want to revisit in my years ahead.

Meanwhile, the Tuesday Tendrils, ten items about whatever strikes my fancy, will continue, as will the Sunday night Kinisi.

I promise you these posts will encompass another full year. Please stop by often, and leave comments, especially. I still think your contributions are the best part.

Happy New Year, dear readers.

If you’re a self-published author, how do you stack up?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, we want folks to read our work, but we do dream of fame and riches, right?

Now, for a splash of cold reality.

  1. Even though a lot of authors are turning to self-publishing their own books, most don’t sell many copies. The typical self-published author sells about five copies, according to one report, while another has the average at 250. I’m guessing that some really hot sellers pull the average way up over the mean, kinda like winning the lottery.
  2. Another report has the average book now selling fewer than 200 copies a year and under a thousand copies over its lifetime. At the bottom, 90 percent of self-published books sell under a hundred copies. Not a lot to crow about, is it?
  3. On the other hand, self-published books account for a $1.25 billion annual market. At Amazon, that comes to $520 million in royalties. (As a self-published author, my royalties on an ebook rival what I get for a paper edition.)
  4. At Amazon, more than 1,000 self-published authors made $100,000 a year. Well, there goes a fifth of those royalties.
  5. For many authors, one secret to success is in having a lineup of titles rather than relying on just one. In that light, the average self-published author makes $1,000 a year in royalties, according to one account.
  6. But, back to the mean, a third of self-published authors make less than $500 a year and a fifth report making no income.
  7. New book sales don’t account for library patrons or the used book market. Used books? I don’t see ebooks showing up at yard sales. Consider that an advantage.
  8. The average American adult reads just 15 minutes a day, according to one survey that apparently doesn’t considering texting. On the other hand, just what are the others looking at on their phones?
  9. Still, if you’re an author, don’t quit your day job, OK?
  10. Only 1 percent of audiobooks on Audible are self-published.

If you’re a writer or a reader, look at the competition

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Do you ever feel guilty as a reader? Not just in what you’re reading or in the things you “ought” to be doing in the time you’re engaged in a book or even a magazine, but also in the reality that you just can’t keep up in your particular field of interest?

And how about that nagging fear that maybe somebody else, somewhere, is already covering what you’re trying to develop … and probably doing it better?

If you’re an author, here’s what you’re up against

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s begin with the competition. Readers are a minority in today’s society. If you want to tell your story or deliver the data in readable terms, it’s a shrinking audience, one further diced by increasing alternatives.

Let’s start with the first question. Do you read books? If not, nobody’s interested in yours. Period. Forget all the movies and so on of fame and wealth.

Google Books concluded that 129,864,880 books have been published since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1440 up to 2010. But, thanks to self-publishing and ebooks, there’s been an explosion since.

It’s enough to make the writing life feel futile.

No index and no footnotes

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

November is the month many amateur writers set out to draft a full novel within 30 days.

My book Quaking Dover is nonfiction, but with eight published novels, I can still sympathize.

I should have been suspicious when this book seemed to write itself, producing what one beta reader then sensed as not just stream-of-consciousness but a mind-dump.

Ouch!

Revising it, aiming at a more consistent, creative non-fiction tone, was much more torturous and required much more time and attention than I can calculate. Still, I have to admit the result feels satisfying. Just don’t make me do it again.

As a history book, it wound up with no index and no footnotes but instead focused on a community of people over time.

Well, the ebook edition can be easily searched for items. Not so with the paperback.

As for footnotes? Much of my research in the Covid outbreak was conducted online, not exactly a permanent source of information.

The effort did push me far beyond my journalism discipline, pushing me into the story as an active observer, not that I was comfortable with that.

But it seems to work, all the same.

Just how many new books are being published, anyway?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

November is the month when a lot of amateur writers make a push to start and finish writing a novel. While I applaud the effort, I also question whether we need that many new manuscripts.

Again, definitive figures turn out to be elusive. Still, focusing on the United States, here’s what turns up:

  1. A conventional view places the output at 600,000 to 1 million new titles every year. That’s between 1,700 to 2,700 published every day – or more than 100 books an hour. Not all of it’s fiction, of course, not by a long shot. But if you’re writing, the competition is stiff.
  2. Another view puts the number at 4 million new books a year, three-quarters of them self-published. Under the radar, as it were.
  3. Hard cover and paperbacks account for just half of the books being sold in America. Ebooks get 36 percent, and audiobooks and “other” formats take up the rest. (When compared by the amount spent on each category, printed-on-paper editions skewer the picture.)
  4. A third of all ebooks are self-published.
  5. Two-thirds of the top-rated, self-published books are written by women, compared to just 39 percent of conventionally released books.
  6. The number of self-published books has increased by 264 percent in a five-year span.
  7. Of authors who released their first book in the last ten years, 1,200 traditionally published authors have earned $25,000 or more a year, compared to 1,600 self-published authors. That’s an eye-opener.
  8. The global publishing market is expected to grow at 1 percent a year, while the self-publishing market is expected to grow at 17 percent. I’m unclear if the figures are based on sales earnings or on the number of copies sold. Still, it’s a trend worth watching.
  9. Not every non-fiction book is read cover-to-cover.
  10. Fiction is for escape.

How many books do you read a year?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

These days, it seems that everyone I meet has written a book. As an author myself, I’d much rather for everyone to have read a book in the past week. Or, gee, even a newspaper.

Trying to get solid figures on how much is being published or read is trickier than you might suspect. But to get us started, let me offer some findings, albeit with a grain of salt. And, to further complicate matters, I’m not exactly sure how the researchers are defining “book.” I’m assuming textbooks, instruction manuals, catalogs, and the like are excluded. But cookbooks? They’re big in our household. That said, in the United States:

  1. Readership averages four books a year.
  2. A quarter to a half of adults admit to reading no books.
  3. A typical bookworm, on the other hand, devours 14 a year.
  4. Non-fiction dominates over fiction, three to two.
  5. History, biography, and memoir are major sellers.
  6. Two-thirds of book readers are women, but they comprise 80 percent of the fiction audience. Some surveys suggest that women age 18-24 are the most frequent fiction readers.
  7. On the other hand, half of American book readers are over age 55.
  8. Romance is the best-selling fiction genre, accounting for a third of the books sold. Mystery, fantasy, and sci fi are also boffo.
  9. Fiction titles still dominate bestseller lists.
  10. Books aren’t just for readers. They’re also for collectors. And gift giving.

 

When it comes to photos for blogging

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever thought about the best shape for a photo in blogging?

So much depends on the device your reader is using. A large PC screen offers many alternatives a cell phone or tablet doesn’t. My own frame of reference is a laptop.

My earlier posts often mixed the sizes of pictures in a post, for variety the way a newspaper photo essay would. But cell phones require a strong image rather than detail.

In general, then, I’ve been settling on full width but shallow – not that the visual content always cooperates.

Alas, those shots do lose some power in fitting into the blog’s formula width, unlike the full screen I use in selecting and editing.

In a grouping, I’ve been keeping them full-width rather than mixing and matching sizes. When our reader scans down, this functions somewhat like a moving camera roll shot. It’s not the way you’d “read” a photo on paper or in an art gallery, admittedly, but it’s an option the technology leads to.

But I’ve also been shooting a lot of square shots, which not too long ago was considered verboten by many observers.

And then, sometimes a deep vertical shot is dramatic, revealing itself portion by portion instead of fully at once.

What’s working best for you?