I last blogged four days from my departure for my second April trip. I traveled to Colorado to see my son’s family. Before I left I was working night and day to give one last minute AI edit of my 259 pages before sending my manuscript to the book printers. I put off writing a Reader column until I was on the Road early Thursday morning. The deadline was Friday evening and I’ve got to explain that writing in the car is impossible when you are listening to an audible book to keep the driver, not me, awake.
I spit out a draft Thursday night or Friday morning at our hotel. It was bare bones but I thought I had a skeleton I could clothe with flesh. That would have wait until Friday night when we arrived in Colorado and of course once in town I was preoccupied with hellos until we turned in. I was exhausted by I thought I put a reasonably well thought out column announcing my new book and reiterating that if in the August primary I lost to Pete Stauber I would be supporting Jen Schultz.
I only just read the well formed but poorly edited result today in the Reader. Finding so many blemishes on a column announcing I was about to publish a book was not easy to endure. I was right about the skeleton. The structure was good but staying up another hour or two would have made a big improvement. I will not link to the Reader’s online version because its disappointing.
But I’ve just read my column which I finished last night for next week. Its called Study Hall. I rather like it.
I woke up half way through the night and went through my emails and was delighted to discover that after a week long wait the Library of Congress gave me my official LCCN number. I just have to send it in as the last change to make on my title page. Printing should commence in three weeks. I won’t wait that long to start selling them for $25 a piece for the paperbacks. I have a plan for selling the first 500. I will look for people to buy four at a time for $100 and give or sell them to acquaintances.
It would be easier if I had books in hand now but that’s a few weeks off yet. In the meantime I must research how to put my book out for Kindle Readers. I have set up but need to iron out details on accepting payments for the eBooks which will be available at a much reduced price. I’d like to offer them for $5 for students and $10 for the general public but that may be a feat beyond my technical abilities. Mostly I want thousands of people to buy them for $5.00 an easy price not to regret if the book remains unread. If I understood a hasty reading of the process I’d get about 70% of the payments. It will be my self proprietorship Welty Press getting the payments. I’ll pay taxes on my earnings but there are no limits on how an individual spends his or her own earnings.
My first printing is very modest at my better half’s pleading. It will only be 500 books. However my plan is to order the next run, a larger one, after 100 book sales. If I can find 25 people to buy four books each that will be the point at which I can order a larger more economical print run. Every person who gets a book will have on the last page information about how to make donations. Unlike Pete Stauber I won’t have to give 5% of donations to Donald Trump.
