This is not a donation request, but a pure thank you to the many anonymous and some known readers who have financed this odd and unpopular pursuit of knowledge and expression.
Also, in my first drunk draft I neglected to thank Ron West, Ishmael, Mescaline Franklin, Jeremy the monster blogger, Lili Hun, the academic rebels from down under led by Eirik Bloodaxe and William Rapier, Lynn Lockhart and our two dozen or so regular commentators who help me keep my facts straight.
Making the decision to place a link to books for sale at the bottom of related articles was a hard one. We had agreed that this would be a non-commercial site.
But at the end of the First Quarter of 2016, after having 30-plus books in print since 2014, and with sales remaining around five or six books per month, my youngest son suggested I place a simple link to a related book at the base of each article. After doing so, book sales increased to approximately one per day by the Third Quarter of 2016.
This enabled me to cut me hours at my overnight grocery job from 28 to 20 and enable more writing focus.
From October through January our web site traffic had increased a great deal, but sales continued to drop back down to the original mark, selling a few copies of each of the most recent how-to-survive books. I then expected a drop in site visits for February—and I won't know until January because I only get a recent window shot and a look at the top 20 hours, making the site traffic fairly unknown to me.
However, the donations, leveled out to enough to keep the site running and finances some book buys for my research. I figured site traffic and sales were headed back down and was actually relived that maybe I'd stay obscure enough to avoid higher levels of censorship than what we had faced on Face Book and Reditt.
I decided to celebrate continued obscurity by getting drunk tonight. With one finger of beer left in my glass, before I shut down for the night's documentary and interview viewing, I decided to check the main Create Space accounts, which is where almost all our sales come from, based on artlcle links to related books. I was hoping we had broken 10 book sales for the month.
It is January 27, the end of the shortest month, and I clicked on the site and saw that 37 copies had sold! This is the highest ratio of sales to days yet, netting me 91 dollars and change.
Based on the sales pulses, these sales correspond directly to top 10 and recent 100-plus post reads.
We also consistently see an end of month buying pattern, which assures me that I am not popular among welfare recipients.
As I sit wondering if this is flat beer at the bottom of this glass, or if the rye whiskey I mixed with it settled and that bottom inch that remains un-drunk is pure poison, all I can say is, wow, I'm glad that's not an un-drunk girl on my lap, and I'm sure glad that up to 37 folks thought something I wrote was worth reading enough to buy.
Thank you, all of you. This is quite a surprise. It might not seem like much, but after being in print continuously with at least one book since 2000, I never thought I'd sell enough books to buy a pare of jeans, a case of beer and a crunch box supreme from the Taco joint.
Thanks again. This makes me want to get off my ass—oh, wow, I do this on my ass—I need a new inspirational idiom...
Hey, only one person has bought this one:
He: Gilgamesh: Into the Face of Time
Well, except for the couple I've bought from you directly, I've been building my Lafond collection from Amazon.com so far; I've not got as far as Kindle yet, paper books by the chairside is what I want, so I'll wait till I need the next three or four and then just Email and PayPal directly for them, I reckon, based on your 2/16 blog post that answered my Email question.
They're really a lot of fun to read and have got a lot of good stuff in them, both anecdotal tales that don't really apply to me but are good Man Stuff to know, as well as advice that I can apply directly to my own life and situation. I'm a long way from agreeing with or liking everything in them, but there's nothing wrong with that ....
Thanks, LaMano, and if we agreed on everything we wouldn't have much to share, so I'm glad for that.
James,
Always weigh your Son's advice seriously. They watch their Fathers more carefully than a dog watches his master and know your failings well.
You're welcome sir. Keep on with the great politically incorret work.
Self-promotion is artistic self-defense/self-preservation. REH promoted his work all the time. When a person urges Lovecraft to read a boxing yarn, they are definitely self-promoting.
Listen to your son.