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.

Relic Worlds - Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World

I recently finished the trailer for the first Relic Worlds novel.

A Big Decision to Make

After a couple weeks of not posting, this week I’m going to post something similar to what I wrote a while ago.  The reason for this is less laziness, (though I am a bit lazy right now,) and more because it’s a very serious decision I need to make.

After approaching more than 50 agents to try to get an upcoming book published through a traditional publisher, I had finally given up and was willing to accept that this book would be published independently as well.  I had been wanting to do this one traditionally so that I could connect with a lot of places that I couldn’t connect with on my own.  But now it was looking like it would be added to my collection of independently published books, and was making plans.

Then one single agent wrote to me and showed some interest.  I’m not sure how interested they are, as their emails have seemed pretty indifferent, but they’ve at least been wanting to take a look at more and more of the book.  So I’ve been sending it to them bit by bit.  I have meanwhile been making plans to independently publish it, so now I’m left with a dilemma.  If they say they want to represent me, should I accept it and go with them, or should I go independently anyway.  Here are the pluses and minuses of each.

Traditional Publishing:

Positives – There are two basic positives to publishing traditionally.  First, the publishers provide promotions.  Second, they get your book into places you can’t get them; namely bookstores.  They have connections at all of these places and send out regular catalogues from which materials are ordered.  These are too numerous for us to do on our own, and when we do contact them, they usually turns us down because we’re not traditional publishers.  This is true both of bookstores and promotional places, such as television and radio stations.

Negatives – To get to a publisher, you have to first sign with an agent.  While you do research on an agent and try to get one you can trust, it’s difficult to know for certain until you’ve already signed with them whether they’re going to do right by you, and by that time it’s too late to turn around and do it yourself.  There’s also no guarantee they’ll actually send it to publishers.  They could just sit on your book because it competed with one of their other books, and they didn’t want it out there in the market, or they might change their mind and not do anything with it for whatever reason.  Then there’s the possibility that even though they do pitch it to publishers, the publishers decide they don’t want it, and then you’re completely stuck, because the agent still has exclusive rights of the book, but it’s not getting published.  And in the end, either the agent or the publisher could decide that you need to revise it in ways you don’t want to revise it, and if you don’t, they still have the rights to it, and you’re not getting published.  And then, even if it is published, it could take two years or more to actually get onto the shelves.

Independent Publishing:

                Positives – Full control.  This is especially important with this piece because it’s about a family that really wants to make sure their ancestor is well represented.  Also, there are multiple places that might want to make this into a movie, and if I get it published soon, they might be serious about that.  If I wait too long, they might lose interest.

                Negatives – A lot of people close their doors to independent publishing.  It’s not right, but they do it.  Many bookstores won’t carry it; even independent bookstores, (go figure.)  As for promotions, many, many radio and TV stations won’t cover you.  Even many blogs, which are independently published themselves, won’t cover your book.  And even those radio and TV stations that criticize corporations and claim to support independent artists, (like the Colbert Report,) won’t even consider independently published books.

So there you go.  That’s my dilemma.  I don’t know which direction I’m going to go.

But I hope it helps some of you out there.

Learning Hashtags

I have to admit something.  I hate hashtags.  I find them incredibly annoying.  First, it’s the fact that the person has finished what they’re saying, yet they’re still repeating words from their statement, which I find a bit odd.  Then there’s the motivation behind it.  It’s a blatant call to “look at me!”  I’ve been really enjoying Jimmy Fallon’s parodies of hashtags on Late Night, and I have several times placed up parody hashtags as a way to make fun of them.

However, in the world of promoting your work, and by extension yourself, you have to do it.  I have a wonderful social media person helping me out with Relic Worlds right now named Tricia.  She has been showing me the value of these hashtags.  By posting my images and various activities, she’s shown me how to get attention to my projects.  The most important aspect of these posts has been the hashtags.  The reason is because it connects the post to other people who have used hashtags on their posts.  So when someone clicks on their hashtag, they see my post, and vice versa.

One problem with this is that, with so many people marketing themselves, or just going “look at me!” there are a lot of hashtags that do not relate to what they’re saying.  For instance, you’ll have a picture of a tank and put #scifi, then when you click on it you’ll see someone at the beach with that hashtag; someone who’s just trying to get people to look at her.  It has nothing to do with science fiction.

Posts like this have really devalued the hashtag, and it makes me wonder how much longer this craze will last.  I feel as though it’s a fad, but I also felt that way about Twitter, so what do I know?  For now, I guess I’ll be doing it myself, but I feel quite dirty.

#writing #author #selfpublishing #Jimmyfallon #scifi #beachbum #hashtags #sellout #Ifeelsodirty

The American Game is Released After 18 Years

I have finally finished and released my book The American Game after 18 years of working on it.  I first began this journey back in 1996 pitching the concept to a production company that made TV movies.  At first I only wanted to pitch the concept and move on to other things, but I slowly got sucked into it until I found myself the writer and producer of it championing it in draft after draft after draft; bouncing between studios and production companies.  There were hundreds of actors, (many of them well-known actors,) who saw it, many of whom said they wanted to be part of it.  But I couldn't get it funded.  It was at one point even listed as one of the best movies never made, a list in Hollywood of scripts that are really good, but can't find their funding.

A few years ago, I finally gave up when the production company who made Crash basically scammed me into spending a bunch of money and time to put together a proposal that they didn't intend to consider.  I was so devastated from that blow that I dropped out of the game, and finally decided to do it as a movie.

It was odd the way this story affected people in Hollywood.  It was very much like the ring in Lord of the Rings.  They got obsessed with it and their evil sides came out.  I, too, am not proud of everything I did when trying to get this movie made.  Yet, despite everyone's efforts, it never got made.

The story is about a series of base ball games that take place between enemy soldiers during the American Civil War.  I often pitched this story along with several others, and everyone always picked this one, even if it didn't fit what they did, or were capable of doing.  They always told me it was perfect as it was, then had me rewrite the script to their desires over and over and over.  Most of the time these changes were based on egos and power trips, making alterations that didn't improve it, but worked out some issue they were dealing with.  In the end, I wrote 119 drafts.

In the book, I shed everything everyone else said and wrote the story I wanted to write.  What has emerged is what I hope is a powerful and moving story, but that will be for the readers to judge.  It is, at times, a bit hard to get through, I'll admit, as I did not want to hold back on some of the realities of the time.

In particular, racism and slavery is approached in a very blunt fashion, as is the culture of the South.  I'm concerned that people may interpret the narrative as being harsh, or even racist, when, in fact, it's meant to just not gloss over what existed at the time.  I make an attempt to be clear, particularly in the end, that slavery and the racism it was a part of, (and still is,) are some of the greatest evils of this nation's history; but I didn't want to do it from a 21st century politically correct point of view.  I wanted the culture to be played realistically for its time, and that might read very tough in today's world.

On the flip side of that coin, I hope people don't see this as a reprimand on the South either.  My own personal view is that, while there is very clearly a culture gap between the north and south even to this day, (and I feel the country should split,) the way they rebelled at the time was, in my view, a mistake.  But I try to show this through the eyes of the soldiers who were there and believed in the cause, not of slavery, as they don't own any,but of having their own country.  However, because the story takes place near the end of the war, when the South was clearly beaten, I have a tendency of portraying it as a truly lost cause, so desperate they'll send their troops out at gunpoint.  This did happen, actually, but it doesn't represent the whole war, as many southerners fought fiercely and willingly for what they believed in.

I almost wrote essays at the end of the book explaining these two points at the end of the book, but I was afraid it might look too apologetic.  It may look that way here, but there aren't many people reading these blogs, so I guess it's okay.  In short, I hope people understand the intention of the book, which is not intended to be either racist nor a slam on the South, but a realistic portrayal of an ugly time that was brightened a bit by base ball.  (And yes, I'm saying it correctly.  Back then, baseball was separated into two words.)

http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404688416&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur