Jump to content

I'm officially an author


Eagle
 Share

Recommended Posts

No, I haven't finished my book on XJs and MJs. (That may happen soon, but I might stick to MJs.) This one is totally foreign to Jeeps -- it's about ways for people who can't afford to spend a lot to make their lives more secure. I got some ideas after my daughter was mugged a couple of times while away at college, and I started researching things to try to teach here about situational awareness. I think the advice all fell on deaf ears, so I put it into a book.

 

It just came out on Amazon as an e-book. Paperback version hopefully soon to follow.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TT85DWL/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Frugal+Yankee's+Guide+to+Personal+Security&qid=1611386227&sr=8-1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Congratulations. An incredible amount of work went into that. I went to school with a guy that has published quite a few novels. He started with one, and went on from there. Do you have plans for more?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, BeatCJ said:

Congratulations. An incredible amount of work went into that. I went to school with a guy that has published quite a few novels. He started with one, and went on from there. Do you have plans for more?

 

"Plans" might be too strong a word, but hopes and intentions -- yes. My problem is deciding which one to work on next. I have three books (at least) that I have long ago started laying the groundwork for:

 

  1. My "great American novel." It will be about a retired Army officer who plays a major role in defeating alien invaders who come to Earth with the intention of harvesting Earthlings as a food source. It will have religious/spiritual overtones -- the aliens think Earth is open season to them because they believe that God has given up on us ...
  2. The Jeep book (or books -- not sure whether to do XJ and MJ together, or separate books on each)
  3. There are a number of good books about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and some decent books about the Second Amendment. Most refer to a number of very old documents, some of which are easy to find on the Internet and some of which are not so easy to find. My project is to pull all those documents together into a single source collection.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, Eagle said:

 

"Plans" might be too strong a word, but hopes and intentions -- yes. My problem is deciding which one to work on next. I have three books (at least) that I have long ago started laying the groundwork for:

 

  1. My "great American novel." It will be about a retired Army officer who plays a major role in defeating alien invaders who come to Earth with the intention of harvesting Earthlings as a food source. It will have religious/spiritual overtones -- the aliens think Earth is open season to them because they believe that God has given up on us ...
  2. The Jeep book (or books -- not sure whether to do XJ and MJ together, or separate books on each)
  3. There are a number of good books about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and some decent books about the Second Amendment. Most refer to a number of very old documents, some of which are easy to find on the Internet and some of which are not so easy to find. My project is to pull all those documents together into a single source collection.

Good luck on each. No reason not to work on all.

 

As a traced descendent of John Locke, I think the last is a wonderful idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Eagle said:

 

"Plans" might be too strong a word, but hopes and intentions -- yes. My problem is deciding which one to work on next. I have three books (at least) that I have long ago started laying the groundwork for:

 

  1. My "great American novel." It will be about a retired Army officer who plays a major role in defeating alien invaders who come to Earth with the intention of harvesting Earthlings as a food source. It will have religious/spiritual overtones -- the aliens think Earth is open season to them because they believe that God has given up on us ...
  2. The Jeep book (or books -- not sure whether to do XJ and MJ together, or separate books on each)
  3. There are a number of good books about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and some decent books about the Second Amendment. Most refer to a number of very old documents, some of which are easy to find on the Internet and some of which are not so easy to find. My project is to pull all those documents together into a single source collection.

I vote #2!  :peep:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Project option #3 is the one I feel most interested in doing at the moment, but it's going to be a LOT of work. I have sent out inquiries to a couple of lawyers I know to ask if such a collection already exists. If it's been done, there's no point in reinventing the wheel. But I haven't found such a collection anywhere, and I think it could be valuable. I don't have kids young enough to be in school now (my adopted daughter is 26) but, from what I hear from frieds with kids in school today, the schools aren't teaching anything close to the truth about American history.

 

Meanwhile, the paperback version of my book has come out on Amazon. Same link now takes you to both the e-book and the paperback. And it's also available in a Nook edition on Barnes & Noble.

 

 

 

3d_New.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/3/2021 at 7:41 PM, mjeff87 said:

Can I get a print copy of that from you direct so as not to give a cut to the overlords?

 

Short answer: I don't know.

 

Long answer: A lot has changed in twenty+ years. About twenty years ago I "helped" a friend get a book printed that her older brother had written but which didn't get published before he died. She had a friend who was (or claimed to be) a literary agent. The agent friend tried shopping the book and no major publisher was interested, so my friend and the brother's widow decided to self-publish it as a memorial to him. In those days, that meant printing out your own, camera-ready master copy and sending it to a vanity press printer. The printer would then print out however many copies you wanted -- but IIRC the minimum was 500 copies. So, after a ton of work and several thousand dollars, you ended up with a pile of cartons of books in your garage that you were then on your own to sell.

 

Of course, neither my friend nor the widow knew how to do any of that -- so I did it all for them (except for paying for it). I didn't charge them anything for the time I put in, and it was extensive. I even designed the cover. I think it cost them $3,000 or $3,500 for 500 copies of the book, which they then gave to members of the family. But they did send two copies to the Library of Congress, so it's officially a book.

 

Both the Kindle e-book version and the paperback version of my book were done through Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publisher). The print version is set up as print-on-demand, so it doesn't cost me anything up front, and I don't have to store cartons of books and try to market them. I submitted the book as a fully formatted PDF file (and a separate PDF of the cover). KDP takes the file and holds it. When someone buys a copy of the book, they print *a* copy of the book and send it to them. So I don't have copies of the book that I can send without paying Jeff Bezos' markup. I wish I did.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/3/2021 at 10:44 PM, fiatslug87 said:

Does your book include instructions for making one of these?

 

MonkeyFist.JPG

 

No, it doesn't. I used to know how to make those -- I still have a couple lying around here, somewhere, I think, but it must be fifty years since I made one and I couldn't do one now from memory.

 

For those who don't know what that is -- it's called a "Monkey's Fist."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, BeatCJ said:

I started your book last night.

 

Thanks for persisting and putting it together. I'll probably load up on copies for my kids for birthdays this year.

 

Thank you. If you think it's any good, please spread the word. The real hurdle with self-publishing, it turns out, isn't the writing or the publishing, it's the promotion. Most of the writer web forums suggest that authors should have web sites, but those are mostly people who churn out romances or fantasy books on almost a mass production basis, so they have lots of titles and they can always talk about the next one that's "coming soon." Having a web site when I only have one, potentially boring title doesn't seem to me like a great investment in resources.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No probably not wort churning out a website for one or two books, but a few reviews will help. Do you use social media at all? I find that we get more feedback at work from our Facebook page than our website. I have a high school acquaintance that has published several books, and he has a Facebook presence for that. Also, I think Amazon also has author pages, but I don't know if that's only for authors with more than one book.

 

I'll post a review, when I get done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...