"So, when's your next book?"
Taking a moment to publicly ponder my answer.
The question was asked of me at church last week, and it got me to thinking of how to revise and extend my remarks.
First I want to begin with some history.
Those who know me also know I have written two books, on somewhat congruent subjects (both are political) but done in completely different ways. Book number one began as a series of blog posts I had done in 2007, and it took me about four years to decide they were worth revisiting, figure out how to put them together as a cohesive whole, update the initial pieces, and add several chapters of new content.
That was my learning experience: I had no idea about self-publishing or promotion, so what I learned I figured out on the fly. And it was a DIY effort, even down to the cover photo - I took that when Kim and I went to Washington, D.C. in 2009. As for promotion, I did one radio interview regarding the book, and I learned that being remote and being bumped by local events is a lot different than sitting in studio as a scheduled guest.
(Most of the previous “Radio days” posts came from a time when I was a regular in-studio guest on local Salisbury radio as a prominent local blogger.)
As time went on, I had my attention turned to other events and I never really got back to promoting my first book. This was an era when my website was heavily invested in Maryland politics and keeping up with that kept me plenty busy. Truth be told, I’ve had occasional thoughts of revisiting So We May Breathe Free with a new title but a similar concept of proposing common sense solutions to various problems in government - something government probably wouldn’t much like.
Conversely, my second book (Rise and Fall) came out thanks to a shakeup in my political world. After the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016, I resigned from both my local Central Committee and Republican Club, so I found myself with extra time on my hands.
Initially, the nomination of Donald Trump seemed to me to be the death knell of the TEA Party movement, of which I was a strident backer. That was the concept with which I began the research and writing for Rise and Fall. (That’s why I had the original title as just The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party.) And unlike my first book, this was all original writing that I didn’t share with my blog audience. It was a totally separate project that took me about 2 1/2 years and, along the way, I realized that much of the TEA Party faithful that tuned out after the moderate Mitt Romney won the GOP nomination in 2012 came back to life when Donald Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015. After I realized that, I added And How it Elected Donald Trump to the title.
Part of writing Rise and Fall was remembering my previous experience with promotion, something I wished to improve on. To that end, about 18 months before publication I put up a social media page to keep people in the loop on progress and several months before it hit the streets I had a website for the book, with a sample chapter and observations on writing it. I spent a few evenings researching radio stations to see which would be most amenable to having me on as a guest - turns out I was on about 20 local stations all around the country over about a six-month period, some for a quick few minutes and some where I had 30 to 60 minutes to interact with the hosts. (Those were my favorite.) And all I did was ask - I didn’t have a publicist taking care of these.
Okay, so now that I’ve taken over 750 words to explain where I’m at, let me answer the question. I still don’t know.
I’ve had several ideas, but they just haven’t been inspiring enough for me to make the effort. Every month or two I get a couple bucks from selling one of my previous books, but to be quite honest I don’t get encouraged by the prospect of selling a few copies when I have this outlet (as well as The Knothole.) If my book sales were even in the 3- or 4-digit range I’d have been more willing to put in the effort, but I like this format better anyway.
Think about it: I write all of these pieces at about 1,000 words apiece, twice a week and occasionally on Sundays. That’s maybe 120,000 words a year and my draft of Rise and Fall came in around the 90,000 range as I recall. So I’m writing a book-plus a year, and here I don’t get stuck on a shelf. It doesn’t make me a royalty at this moment, but I’m still trying to grow my subscriber base and once I get to a point I’ll come up with ideas for bonus content for which I can charge a nominal monthly fee.
So there’s the long answer to my friend’s question. I still have the passion for writing, but it’s more fun to me to do it in this format for now and see where it goes. I’m not closing the book on writing one, but for right now the prospect is up on the shelf.