My Amazon Adventures

I am taking a break from reading the book of Acts, whereby I hope to give myself strength to continue being saintly and superior. Not everyone can be as great a Christian as I am, but thank goodness, I have the humility to refrain from putting down those who fail.

I checked Amazon. So far, I have done nearly nothing to promote the cookbook; things are in the works, but very little has happened so far. Nonetheless, it keeps bobbing in the popularity rankings. Ordinarily, book sales work like this: you do some PR, and the book’s sales improve briefly. Then they sag pretty badly. So you do more PR. This time, the sales don’t appear to be closely related to the PR.

That seems like a good sign. Optimally, you want a book to sell by word of mouth, because no promotion can compare to an army of individuals hyping the book to friends and relatives. If that were to happen, I would expect the sales peaks to follow the arrival of the book in people’s hands. In other words, I would expect a bounce from initial PR, then a drop, and then another bounce as the people who bought books in the first bounce recommended the book to other people. And eventually, you expect the peaks to sort of merge into a gradual upward trend, as buying and shipping dates become more numerous and less rhythmic.

I hope that’s what’s starting to happen.

If Amazon’s site is correct, they’ve run out of copies twice. So someone must be buying.

I seriously believe this book has more appeal than the others. It kills me that I wasn’t able to publish it a year ago, because even then, I thought it was my best shot at success, and at establishing a series of books based on the same theme. When you publish a book, you are relying on other people’s money; the publisher has to make an investment in order to get the book onto shelves. So you have to rely on their marketing judgment, and you can’t blame them for going with projects that seem safe to them, based on the success of other books. You can either let them make choices for you, or you can start your own publishing company.

I almost lost the opportunity to publish the cookbook. My agent sold it, but we didn’t execute a contract, because we were fooling with other things. Then the offer disappeared, and I had to get him to sell it to them again. I was mortified. I had assumed that my agent and editor wouldn’t let anything fall through the cracks, but here is a fact of life: nobody will ever be as interested in looking after you as you are. People have their own problems to worry about, so worry about yours, and you’ll be okay.

This book was accepted almost as a favor to me. My editor liked it, but it didn’t thrill the marketing people the way…don’t laugh…the caveman book did. My advance was about as low as advances get. But I took it, because, unlike a lot of sharp operators masquerading as writers, I think more about royalties than advances. Now, in comparison to the other books, it appears to be a much easier product to sell. Life is funny.

I dread the idea of running an Internet forum, because it will be work, and I know from moderating comments that whatever I do will make people mad. But I think I’m going to set up a forum anyway, because it’s good business. If I do, it should be up and running this week. I’ll tell you right up front that only four of George Carlin’s ten deadly words will be permitted. If you can’t say it at 9 p.m. on CBS, don’t write it in the forum. And if you’re just generally obnoxious and a pain in the ass, your stuff will get deleted over and over.

Maybe I’ll con someone into helping me moderate.

I’ll need a new hosting account in order to have a forum, so Manly Grub will probably go offline for a day or two this week. Best to do the switch now, while the site is attracting so few readers.

If you cook my recipes and take photos, feel free to send them. I’ll put them in the site’s gallery. In fact, any impressive and original food photos will be welcome. No salad; let’s be clear about that from the get-go.

That’s all.