Retrospect

Though I was born in the 1960s, my real cognizance of cultural, social and political trends didn't start until the 70s. Yeah, I lived through the buildup in Vietnam, Woodstock, the Kent State shootings, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the first British invasion, the 1968 Democratic National Convention with the Chicago Seven, but I don't remember any of that. I was too busy with my Legos, GI Joe, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and so on.

I became a teenager in 1973. There was junior high, high school and the start of college. There was a driver's license. There were jobs. There were girls. I became aware.

So much of the 70s is looked upon with distaste, scorn, derision. Because the 70s found its expression in disco, its fashion in bell bottoms, leisure suits and platform shoes, its leadership in Nixon, Ford and Carter, it is relegated to the status of kidney stones. Is this a fair judgment? Tough to say.

Much of the cultural malaise ascribed to the 70s was born from a 60s hangover, I think. Drab images from Vietnam, riots, and an overwhelming tide of negative energy generated by polarization of views and action found their response in the bright colors of polyester, spinning balls of mirrored light and LSD. A pendulum had swung.

I wasn't a big fan of the 70s. I didn't like junior high or high school, and that six years is a major chunk of the decade. The music of the time didn't generally impress me. The pain of first breakup was experienced, though that seems quite minor now.

I will say this - as blah as the mid-70s seemed, from 1977 on, it improved. I don't know if it was due to growing older, but I left for college in 1978 and that still remains one of my favorite eras in my life's history.

Time has tempered my view of the 70s. Now and then, I will hear a song that transports me back to that time, and I find myself stirring with positive feelings for that kidney stone of a decade. I'm not saying I'd like to go back and relive any of it.

But it's not the snark inducer it once was.

Except I still hate bell bottoms.

KDP Select Promotions Analysis

In order to help promote indie and unknown writers, Amazon has allotted money toward the KDP Select program which allows the author to distribute e-books through the Kindle Owner's Lending Library and still receive a royalty. Additionally, authors are allowed to offer their e-books as free downloads for five days at a time in order to offer readers samples of works they would most likely not purchase.

I gave the free promotion a try with four different short stories I've published for Kindle. The following are my results of the promotion.

The four stories I offered for free were The Train, The Concourse, The Decision and A Forest in Forever. With the exception of The Decision, all the stories are from the compilation, Of Trains and Other Things. This promotion was available in the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

In the month of February - my promotion ran about 2 weeks - my stories were downloaded a total of 1291 times. Of that number, 1073 were downloaded in the US. UK came in second with 199 downloads, Germany third with 19 and France last with 1. There were no downloads in Spain or Italy.

Of those 1291 downloads, 1262 were free. 31 were paid downloads. In other words, there were 31 purchases of my e-books in that time period. One of those purchases was made by me as I wanted to see how the work displayed in Kindle. So there were actually 30 unique purchases of my e-books.

Total cost for download including both free and purchased books was $456.29. I use the word "cost" for analysis purposes - technically, it didn't cost me anything, at least not out of pocket - to give away e-books for free. However, those would still be considered a cost in accounting terms and I will do that here as well.

Total sales of purchased works came to $13.23 which includes the $2.07 royalty I received for buying my own book to check the formatting.

Conversion of free downloads to purchased downloads is 2%. In terms of response to direct mail or coupon advertising, this is not a good return on investment. Typical returns on direct mail pieces are expected to run 4%-5%.

Once the free promotion ran its course, there were a few purchased downloads, but those have come to a stop about a week after the last book stopped being free.

As a promotion, from my point of view, I'd say it was not successful - especially in the short term. Long term effects cannot be measured at this point.

Two people left a review from the free download. I am somewhat suspicious as to the origin of the reviewers because even though they had different identifying names, the reviews themselves were similar in wording.

There are some who would argue that the real value in offering freebies was the exposure received. That those who are willing to download something for free would not have bought it in the first place. There is merit to that argument, however, I am afraid that the existence of Kindle and e-book formats may actually be responsible for devaluing authors' works.

The reason I say this is because I have spent time on Amazon forums where I have read Kindle owners complaining about the cost of some e-books being similar to the cost of hard copies.

There seems to be a fallacy of thought that because the e-book is no more than electrons displaying on a screen, in other words, there's no physical substance, then it should not cost as much as a printed book. This mentality reduces an author's skill, creativity and long hours of writing to absurd levels of price expectation.

Unfortunately, there is a great evolution going on in publishing, and I can see both advantages and disadvantages in it. But that's really a blog for a different day.

I may toy around with offering up some more freebies.

But if my current results are accurate, I can't see a lot of benefit to it. Just 98% of the Kindle owners getting something for free.

Swimmer Adrift

Sometimes we get too far away from things.

Everyone drifts. Some more than others. Then we find ourselves one day lookng back at what once was, and we wonder how we've come to our current place.
It's not a freak thing, nor is it planned.

It just happens.

For instance, I was thinking about something I used to do regularly about 10 years ago. The activity was rock hunting. To perform this exploration, I would walk a fair distance into abandoned quarries and spend several hours digging and washing rocks looking for nice collectibles.

Sometime in there, I stopped doing it.

It was never my intention to stop doing it. I just did. Probably other responsibilities or activities just replaced the time I used for rock hunting.

Whatever the reason, it's not something I can go back to now.

My terribly arthritic hip wouldn't allow it. I've gotten too far away from the activity to stay in shape for it.

Though I don't usually think about these things, they do pop into my head now and then. And I think about them with curiosity as to why I stopped. The answer isn't always available.

Sometimes we just stop.

And then we get too far away from them.

The same can happen with people.

I did an internet search of a good friend I had in the 90s. It turns out the she died in 2009. The obituary didn't say why, but she was only about 56 years old.

We parted ways after the company we worked at closed due to her husband's death in 1998. She and he owned the company. I think I saw her twice after the closure, but all contact ceased from that point.

We got too far away from each other.

The effort to decrease our distance would have been difficult even though she lived fairly close to the company where I have been working for the last 11 years. It would have been inconvenient and time consuming.

I'm sorry I didn't make the effort.

But I refuse to regret any of this.

Most of this.

Some of this?

Facebook Philippic

I am tired of you talking about how tired you are.

How much you need coffee. Or anything to do with getting, stopping for, or drinking your morning coffee.

I am tired of you making a heart with your hands, or one of your hands combined with the hand of another to form a heart.

I don't want to know about your sleep patterns, the amount of work facing you or what you are doing to battle XYZ illness.

I am tired of hundreds of photos you have taken of yourself in the mirror. And I don't really want to see any more pictures of you with your face jammed up beside someone else's or with you holding a large plastic cup of beer beside several other people holding large plastic cups of beer.

You overrate your cleavage.

I am sick to death of the coercive statements you post that try to shame me into stating how much I love Jesus, or how I agree that cancer is terrible, or that I shouldn't mistreat animals because, you know, 95% will not repost it, so I must be part of that loser majority.

I don't care what level mobster boss you killed or that you need my help to perform a heist.

I'm not impressed by your sharing of pithy little sermons about how you were raised, how you are underestimated or what meaning daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, moms or dads bring to our lives.

I really don't want to see pictures of beaten dogs or photoshopped cats.

You really need to stop drooling over fake profile pictures of incredibly gorgeous women. They are most likely not the profile owner.

I don't want to see your items on Etsy, the portraits you use to promote your photography, your bad paintings or all those pictures of sleeping babies.

You are not near as clever as you think you are.

I confess to spending some time studying pictures you posted in order to find the hidden gotcha, but even those are becoming mundane and rather stupid.

Your links to videos of amazing musical virtuosos who are younger than ten years old aren't as interesting as you think. Nor are those inspirational posters as inspirational - I know I'm not inspired.

Don't tell me what you are having for dinner, where you are going clubbing, how you are trying to resist chocolate, that your car is broken, or that I should be the change I want to see.

There.

I'm done.

For now.