Researching Pro Bono

When researching my first non-fiction book, Pro Bono, I had a slightly unfair advantage.  I was starting with a story that my family has been involved with for decades.  I drew from stories I had grown up with, some of which I had lived through.  And a large amount of it came when I was doing a small documentary about my family.  It just happened to be when my grandmother was diagnosed with a fatal tumor, and everyone from the family flocked into town.  I never finished the documentary, but I did get a very thorough record of everyone, especially my grandfather, who everyone worshipped.

This was a baseline.  But I needed to be fair in the story.  This was about a controversial story that my grandfather happened to be wrapped up in.  I needed to do as much as possible to be objective, and see the opposite side’s point of view.

The first thing I did, as I do with most of my books, and all my non-fiction works, is I broke it into chapters.  I thought of what made appropriate breaks in the story, and I started each chapter at these points.  I determined the basic concept of each, then wrote down all the information that I would need for them.  By each piece of information, I wrote down every source I could think of for it.  I then approached those sources.

When it comes to a case that’s nearly 60 years old, it’s hard to get first-hand accounts.  Usually, you have to go to people who were assistants, or the children of one of the people.  Each time, I tried to get any documentation they had, such as phots or records.  Luckily, one of the most important people, Ninette Beaver, (who was a reporter that followed the story from beginning to end and even wrote a book about it,) was still alive and was able to tell me a lot about her experiences and what she saw.  I also got the only remaining copy of her documentary Growing Up in Prison.  It was on a format of tape that no longer exists, and there are only a couple places in the world that could even transfer it.  It was expensive, but worth the price as it was a piece of Nebraska history.  (I later placed this documentary on Youtube and have so far gotten more than 10,000 views.)

Perhaps the most important aspect of getting the story straight and unbiased was going to the Nebraska Historical Society where I was able to look at the original trial transcripts.  Purchasing this was, again, expensive, but well worth it, as it’s the only record of a case of great historic significance.  It’s also lucky, as most cases do not have their records preserved so well.

The problem at this point was I had the microfilm, but no way to look at it.  The best way to be able to would be to have it on PDF.  That meant scanning each page at the library and saving it as a JPEG, then combining them all into one big PDF… All 1,000 + pages.  I was luckily on unemployment at the time, so I went to the library for a full week, 40 hours, and scanned one page after another.  It was one of the most tedious things I ever did, but I got the entire thing on PDF.  I placed the first hundred pages on a website and offered to send it to anyone who wanted to see it so people could check my book for accuracy.  I then made sure to include this public record in the book in several chapters.

It took a lot more bringing together of several sources than I thought it would, but it was worth it.  On that book, more than any other, I want to be able to show everyone my sources, because I’m claiming that someone who many think was guilty was actually innocent.

The American Game Available for Free on Kindle This Weekend

The American Game will be available for free on Kindle this weekend as part of a KDP Select promotion.  It will be available for free on the Kindle from Friday, September 26, until Tuesday, September 30.  It can be found at:

http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1411618014&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur

It may seem counter-intuitive to give away one's books for free, but each download counts as a sale, and if there are enough, it can get onto the best sellers list, at least in its category.  This helps with exposure, which leads to even more sales.  I will try to remember to post download results this weekend.

Making a Book Trailer

When you look up book trailers, you usually find very dry, dull, and most of all, cheap videos that leave you less likely to buy the book than when you started watching.  I don’t think this is from a lack of trying.  I think it’s from a lack of looking at it from the reader’s point of view, and a lack of creativity.

There are a lot of trailers that have the author reading the book.  In these cases, I can’t even tell you what he’s saying.  When given visual and audio cues, we tend to take the visual.  I hear “Person talking, person talking, person talking, person talking.”  It’s suggestion through visual leads.  There are many other trailers which show cliché images, like a person’s shadow while a narrator, (usually the author,) reads a part of the story which doesn’t show how the book stands out.  And then there are those trailers with just words.  I might as well just read the description at that point.

What works is making it look like a movie trailer, using the elements that make people go, “I wish I was watching THAT right now.”  If it’s a book, people will want to read it to get those same images in their head.

In doing this, the most important aspects are twofold.  First, be clear about what it is; and second, show how it stands out.  If you show a trailer that makes it look like every other book of the genre, people will just go, I’ve already seen it.

As for being clear, understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean showing it in chronological order, or showing whole scenes, or even telling the whole plot.  Sometimes getting the idea across includes showing a series of shots that express your story or theme.  In the case of many fiction stories, this means just showing clips of single lines of characters mixed in with other shots appropriate to the genre.

In non-fiction, the best route to go, I find, is some sort of documentary.  Make it clear that this is a true story, and make the images, words, and music go along with it.

How to get these images is the biggest question.  You’ll have to make a budget for it, but don’t break the bank on this.  You can get great stock pictures at several sites, like Pond 5 or Shutterstock.  Shooting actors in front of green screens makes it possible to put whatever you want behind them.  And sometimes what you want are images you don’t have to create.  For instance, if it’s non-fiction, you often want images from the true story itself, including photographs and newspaper clippings that are probably already in your book anyway, so you have the rights to them.

And if you’re not planning on showing your book on TV or some other place that requires all the rights to be cleared, you can get away with a lot more.  Youtube actually allows you to post video up of other people’s material, as long as you’re not making money on it.  If you’re doing a book trailer, you truly are not wanting to have other people’s commercials on it, because the trailer itself IS a commercial.  Therefore, you don’t need to be having commercials on it and making money from it.  Below are a couple examples of how I’ve done this.

Relic Worlds – Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World:  I used all sorts of images from other movies and video games, intercutting my actors in front of blue screens that were replaced by backgrounds that looked like the places in the movies and game videos, so they looked like they were in among the other, better visuals.  The cuts are usually so fast that most of it looks like it’s all part of the same scene.  Also, in true trailer form, I have a character start talking in one shot, and it carries over the next, which gives even more of a sense of connection.  To top it off, I used music from Battlestar Galactica, which not only sounded better, it appealed to BSG fans.  Youtube allows me to have this up, as long as I’m not making money directly from the trailer.  And I’m able to post the trailer up in various locations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcDFJT5RPQ8&list=UU1CcgAwLJ7dVsIEVVyQwaVg

The Great Heist – I mixed typewritten information with images from the book.  I then put it all to the music of The Untouchables, which is thematically appropriate to the material.  Again, while it’s not music that I own, as long as I’m keeping it on Youtube and not making money directly from it, it’s okay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaFGR1CPmgA

Two of them that I’ve had a lot of luck with are the ones for Pro Bono and the Pick Your Path books.

Pro Bono – I did two videos in this case.  One of them was a semi-documentary where I mixed footage of an interview with my father talking about the case with images of the case itself all to Bruce Springsteen music that was written about the story.  The other is simply a real documentary that was made in the 1970s about the case.  This has been extremely popular, as it is a documentary lost to history about a case no one forgot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODW6uh1Bt0Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LgGj5nFmoo

The pick your path books actually allows the viewer to pick a path.  They get the initial video, which takes them onto a planet where they follow the main character to some ruins.  He looks at three doors, and the reader gets to click on whichever one they wish to go through.  This takes them to a video that shows them what happens when they go through that door.  (Each one, of course, just leads them to one of the books.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC46wo5qAVU

Bloggers Who Have Forgotten Their Roots

As I’ve tried to get my books spoken about and reviewed by bloggers, I’ve come across the same problem so many times:  Signs on the blogging websites that say they will not take any self-published books.  They review or write only about traditionally published books.

I’ve got a little piece of news for all you bloggers who say that.  YOU ARE SELF PUBLISHED!!!!

Yes, that’s right.  As you’re sitting there behind your keyboard all holier than thou, taking only the “legitimately” published books, you are forgetting that one basic fact.  You are not in a magazine, a periodical, or any other “legitimate,” or “traditionally” published manuscript.  You are SELF-FUCKING-PUBLISHED!!!

I have been rejected by magazines, radio stations, and television stations.  While I’m disappointed, I’m not surprised and I don’t hold it against them.  They have a world of their own, and they want to stick to it.  I hope they’ll open themselves up to us independents, (and some of them have,) but if they don’t, they’re merely sticking to their kind.

You bloggers who won’t talk about or review self-published works are downright hypocrites.

If we have to be traditionally published to be good enough for you, why shouldn't you have to be traditionally published in a magazine in order to be good enough for us?

I have made a determination, and I call on everyone to do the same.  Whenever I look at blogs, even if I’m not in any way considering sending my books to them, I take a look at their submission policy.  If the blogger refuses to have anything to do with self-published works, either for stories, reviews, or whatever, I tag that blog and never return.  I also make it a point to tell people not to go to that blog.

Now, to be clear, this is not the same as being personally rejected by a blog.  If there’s a blog which rejects me, but they take independently published works, I’ll strive to rise to their level and hope they’ll accept me in the future.  I’ll even recommend the site.

But if you reject self-published, independently published books and you’re a blogger, then I’m sorry, but I only read traditionally published magazines.

Doing a Free Kindle Promotion of The American Game in Two Weeks

The American Game will be free on Kindle for five days beginning on September 26 and running through September 30th.  To prepare for this, I'm alerting several sites, including:

Pixel of Ink

Kindle Nation Daily

Ereader News Today

Digital Book Today

Book Gorilla

I'm also posting it on all my social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  I'll also be telling every Civil War, history, and baseball group I can find.

In the past, I've separated my free days, having 2 early in the 90 days of KDP Select, and 3 near the end.  That way I can learn from the first.  This time I wanted to make sure I got some reviews first, then just had them all at once.  I'm hoping it will build in numbers downloading it as I would like to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

This is a story I have been more concerned gets out there to the public than on having a huge profit.  While I believe this is a story that will appeal toa  large audience, I spent so much time on it over 20 years that no amount of money can make up for it.  I'd like this to build my reputation, and just to be seen.  I love this story; I always have.  I'll update this page to say how well my efforts are going.

I’m Concerned for Geek and Nerd Culture

In so many ways, this is the best time to be a nerd.  When I was growing up, the title of geek or nerd was an insult, a degradation, a put down.  Now we live in a world where Weird Al Yankovich is a number one top seller, and geek culture has entered the mainstream.  It’s even popular to call yourself a nerd.

And that’s where my concern lies.

Any time something becomes popular, people want to emulate it, even if they don’t care about it.  It becomes all about conformity.  Comic Con is a great example.  Once a hive for those of us who enjoy stories that were off the beaten path, it’s now become the place for the mainstream to come see celebrities.

We don’t want to exclude anyone, of course, but it does seem less than genuine when Entertainment Tonight and their wannabes are hash tagging themselves as “total nerds” when they’ve really just followed fad after fad, and they will leave when this one fades.

But my concern runs deeper still.  To me, one of the major definitions of nerd and geek culture was giving a chance to the more alternative art forms.  While everyone else was following Debbie Gibson and Tiffany and whatever nameless movies were the latest fads in the late ‘80s, I was reading The Dark Knight, watching Indiana Jones, and listening to Weird Al.  What was the common string in all these things and others I was into?  They broke new ground.  Only Spike Jones had done anything remotely close to Weird Al.  Indiana Jones was an entirely new invention; it wasn’t based on books or old TV shows.  And even The Dark Knight, though it was based on Batman who had been around for 40 years, it was an entirely new take on him, and superheroes in general.  The entire genre has blossomed from that.

The point is, we were willing to try new things.  That’s really what made a “nerd” or a “geek” more than something being cerebral or fantasy-oriented.  Today, however, it seems as though few self-proclaimed nerds and geeks are willing to try anything new.  They are stuck repeating the same things over and over.  For instance, I took my new series Relic Worlds to the Indiana Jones fan club at Comic Con.  It’s inspired by the series, and has elements of Lucas’s other great creation, Star Wars.  Those movies caused me to grow up and want to do something new, though similar.  Instead of giving it a try, the fan club showed no interest.  What would have happened if our parents had given the same chance to Raiders of the Lost Arc in 1980?  If, instead of giving a chance to this new movie by these aspiring filmmakers, they were too busy obsessing over something nearly 35 years old?  If they had been like current fans, they would have been so busy obsessing over something from 1945 that Raiders would have been a failure, and would not exist today in the lexicon of great adventure movies.

And the same is true across the board.  It’s the reason why Hollywood and publishers are obsessing on toys from the past.  It’s not that there aren’t good ideas out there.  I know of many authors and filmmakers who are striving to be heard; and many of them are in the areas that geek and nerd culture would love.  But people are so obsessed with what’s in the past they’re not willing to give a chance to what’s in the present.

So this is a call to all nerds and geeks out there.  Find your roots.  And by that, I don’t mean your old comic books and toys still in their wrappers.  I mean, remember that what made all the things you enjoy from the past famous is because people gave them a chance.  And there are new works that are equally great just waiting to be found.  Give them a chance.  Stop looking backward all the time.

I’ve Decided to Independently Publish Two Gun Hart

It’s now official.  I will be independently publishing Two Gun Hart, the story of Al Capone’s long lost brother who was a Prohibition officer in Nebraska.  I was very torn about this, seeing positives in both traditional publishing and independently publishing.  The decision was ultimately decided for me by others.

I had been weighing the benefits of both decisions for a while.  Traditional publishing gets one into traditional bookstores, and provides a lot of publicity.  I was hoping not only to get publicity for this, but to make the connections I could use for independently published books later.  The benefits of independently publishing would include having control over it and making sure it’s done correctly.  Plus, I will not have to wait for several years to get it out there, which could prove important as I want to make sure it’s released while certain members of the family are still with us.

I wanted to at least see my options.  Publishers refuse to look at it without an agent, so I looked around, gathered information, got connections through friends, etc., and sent it out to more than 50 agents.  I waited for each to get back to me.  A few did.  Several told me they would do it if it was about Al rather than Richard.  A couple were more blatant.  They said they don’t want to do a story about an Italian American unless he’s a gangster.  These racist statements really showed me where their interests were.

Finally, I got my last rejection.  I could go after others.  There are agents out there that don’t advertise being interested in this sort of story, but I don’t see the point of trying that.  It’s strange, because every person I show this idea to is blown away by it.  The agents are the only ones who don’t get it.  It’s their loss, but it’s also sort of the public’s loss, as it will be harder for me to promote it on my own.

I have determined to go for pre-sales.  When one does that, every sale that is made over several months counts as sales in a single day.  That makes it more likely to reach a top seller list.  Every interview I go on and every place I speak, I will be telling about this book, encouraging people to go out right away and buy this as an e-book.  As long as everyone who wants it buys at that time, we’ll have a chance, and the regular publishers will simply have to stand back and watch as they see the sales that could have been theirs.  They will complain, as usual, about how e-books are unfairly taking from them, and they long for the “good old days,” but it’s their own damn fault.