Best-seller? No. Author? Yes

Hard to believe, but a year ago this week Lost in the Ivy hit the major online retailers. Not by storm. More like a drizzle, I suppose. 

But it was sure fun dancing naked even in that light rain back then.

You can see for yourself the roller-coaster ride my book has taken on Amazon.com in this nifty little graph courtesy of Title-Z, which gives a snapshot picture of the book's Amazon sales rankings over the course of the last year. Although a liftetime sales ranking of 413,452 doesn't sound all that impressive, or impressive at all, keep in mind that there are well over 3 million books ranked by Amazon. 

I must confess, though, it's been a little depressing watching that Amazon sales ranking for my book grow like a weed over the last six months. What that obviously means is that hardly anyone is buying my book these days. Sure, every now and then there's a little bump in its ranking but then a week later it's back up in the 700,000 range again.

Should I be surprised that sales of the book have bottomed out? No. Most books have about a three- to six-month shelf life before sales start to slow and eventually become stagnant. And the reality is that I gave up on the book about six months ago when I stopped pumping money and time into marketing it.

The question is, do sales matter? Of course they do, if you want to make money and make your publisher happy and have any hope of getting other books published. And of course sales equates with readers and you want people to read what you wrote or you wouldn't have put it out there in the first place.

Perhaps a better question, though, is should sales matter? And I guess my answer to that is, it depends. It depends on what you want. If you want nothing more than to be a best-selling author, then the answer is, without question, yes. But if you just want to be an author, and you remove "best-selling" from the equation, the answer is, in my mind, no. You should be happy just to have accomplished what few have accomplished: writing a book and seeing it published, no matter how you got it published.

I can't deny that there is a certain part of me that would want to trade places with Stephen King of John Grisham. But there's another part of me that is content just to be what I am: an author. 

A 1st for me ... times 3

A leap of faith is all it took for me to come home Saturday with not one, not two but three 1st place awards in the 2006 Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest, sponsored by the Illinois Woman's Press Association (IWPA). 

I can't say that I was surprised when the awards were officially handed out at the IWPA's Awards Luncheon at the Chicago Athletic Association in Chicago. But that's only because the 1st place winners had been tipped off by an email that was sent  earlier in the week.

Cecilia Green hands out Randy's awards at the IWPA Awards Banquet

The email came on Tuesday evening and let's just say that when you get these kinds of emails, if you're at all like me, your heart starts racing and your palms get all sweaty. You don't even want to read it because you tend to think that good things just don't happen to you. But you open it and then you see the names of the 1st place winners but they're in alphabetical order so you have to read almost all the way to the end to find out that you'd taken THREE 1sts.

This is way more than I ever expected when I took that leap and entered the contest a couple months back. Really I entered not expecting anything at all. But there was my name listed as the 1st place winner in three separate categories: web content for personal or hobby sites for my essay "Pickles and Hiccups"; website development/creation for lostintheivy.com; and fiction, novel for Lost in the Ivy. I also took 2nd place in the web content for personal or hobby sites for "A Cubs fan finds hope in Sox's success", an essay that I now realize seems rather foolish.

I should note that the competition is not over for the three 1st place entries. They've all gone on to the National Federation of Press Women's Communications Contest for judging at the national level. How cool is that? My work being judged in a national competition.

Randy's Awards

Winning isn't everything, but it sure makes you feel good. So good that your wife can convince you to pose for silly photos like the one to the left.

And my publisher liked the news, too. For the second time this year, my book is Up in Lights on their home page.

Update on Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 11:50PM by Randy Richardson

"Will you be attending the awards ceremony in drag, Mr. Dart?" a writer's group friend teased.

The reference was to a character in my book, Jimmie Dart, who is a drag queen.

This was a little friendly razzing for being a member of the Illinois Woman's Press Association when I am obviously not a woman.

I would note that the IWPA is not the the first woman's organization that I joined. That would be Sisters in Crime, a world-wide organization for women writing mysteries. I never hid the fact that I was a man but I didn't come right out and tell anyone that that is what I am. The reality is that there are a lot of men just like me who are Sisters. I wouldn't have joined the group if there weren't. Sure the group is primarily for women, but they don't exclude you or discriminate against you in any way because you're not one of them. So I'm proud to be a Sister.

My entry into the world of the Sisters I think made it a little easier for me to join the IWPA, a group that first came to my attention when I took part in a book fair that they hosted back in November at the Chicago Cultural Center. Now I didn't immediately join because, well, I felt just a little bit uncomfortable about the fact that I was, you know, a man.

Back at the time of the book fair I broached the question whether the group was strictly for the opposite sex. I was told in no uncertain terms that they are open to both kinds. But I didn't join.

Not until a few months later when I got the invite to take part in their Communications Contest. Even then I still wasn't sure. The debate in my head went back and forth but I kept looking at the contest entry form until I finally decided that I really had nothing to lose, other than the cost of membership and the entry fee.

So I took that leap of faith. And it paid off in a big way. Still, I must confess that there was a part of me that felt just a little bit uncomfortable about accepting awards from a woman's organization when I am not a woman but the exact opposite of a woman. The easy thing to do would have been to just take the awards but not go to the awards banquet and show my face as a man. Randy is a kind of adrogynous name and those in attendance that hadn't met me before would probably just assume that I was a woman. But that would be the chickenhearted way to do it and, quite frankly, the unmanly way to do it.

I went to the awards banquet secretly hoping that there would be other men there, and there were. But most of them weren't there to pick up awards. Besides me, there was only one other man that came to pick up an award and he was there with his wife. The two of them had coauthored a book, I believe. There was one other man who won an award (honorable mention) in the non-fiction book category but he didn't make an appearance. That's too bad, because I'd seen him before at the book fair and he was quite entertaining. I wondered if he, like me, felt a little bit awkward about the award. Or if he just wasn't able to make it for some reason or other.

By the time the awards were over, I was glad that I'd come. Everyone that I met there was friendly and supportive and didn't at all make me feel out of place. Except for another award-winning author, Gen LaGreca, whose first question to me was something like, "Men aren't supposed to win these, are they?"

She was teasing. I think.

Update on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 08:21PM by Randy Richardson

Just today I received the judge's comments on my book. The judge was Amanda Freymann, who began her publishing career in 1978 at Houghton-Mifflin Company, followed by Little Brown and Co., the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Stewart, Tabori & Chang. At the Art Institute of Chicago where she was Associate Director of Publications-Production, she produced many exhibition catalogues and a number of popular books, including revised editions of The Essential Guide and Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms, and oversaw the first four children's books to be produced by the Art Institute. This is what she wrote in her comments about Lost in the Ivy:

"A good plot, well written and edited. Great characters. A real Chicago hook!"

Writer Protection Program

Is there a Writer Protection Program?

If there isn't, there should be. It would be modeled after the Federal Witness Protection Program and would allow writers to relocate and change their identities when they do something that they know will embarrass if not humiliate them and subject them to endless ridicule.

Like consenting to having a photograph published in a parental magazine. A photograph in which the writer is pretending to be a knight and is using a cardboard tube left over from wrapping paper as a lance.

If you're a parent and live in Chicagoland, the likelihood is that you have at some point in your life picked up a copy of Chicago Parent. It's a freebie and it's found pretty much everywhere in Chicagoland. You can find stacks of them at my son's daycare.

Well, the editors at Chicago Parent apPARENTy liked an essay I submitted to them about my son (aka The Toddler) and his love of jousting. So much so that it looks like the essay will be published in next month's issue. That's all pretty cool. Anytime you get published it makes you feel good. The part that has me squirming a bit is that the editors didn't want to publish the essay without a photograph. And not just your average, ordinary author mugshot. They wanted an action photograph, something that would lift the words from the essay and bring it to life. They wanted a picture of me jousting with my son. 

Oh, dear. The price we as writers pay to see our words in print. 

So next month you will likely see this writer seeking a place to bury his head in shame. A knight without courage, dignity or honor. 

Coming Out of the Shell

If you just know me from reading my blog, you'd probably never guess that I'm very much an introvert.

I've had people who've known me for years tell me that they don't recognize the person who writes this blog.

In grade school, I was the kid who wore the Cubs cap and rarely talked.

In high school, there was a bully who cruelly nicknamed me Mute. You can see why I didn't like high school much.

It wasn't until college that I began to start crawling out of my shell.

But chronic shyness is not something you overcome easily. It's something that I've battled my whole life and still fight today. It shapes who I am and some of the things I do.

Going to law school was anything but easy for me. In law school, you have to learn to speak up in front of your peers. You can't just hide in the back of the class. For me it meant three years of anxiety. Yet it was a hurdle I wanted to overcome and I did.

Writing is comfortable to me. Speaking is not. This is certainly not true of all writers but it's probably true of most. If you just write for yourself, that's not a problem. But if you write for public consumption, well, then you do indeed have a problem.

Since the release of Lost in the Ivy, I've done multiple radio interviews and made many public appearances. None of these have been easy for me. Yet I do them, not just because I want to sell a book but also because they force me to come further out of that shell.

Yes, there's always that sense of dread that comes with each of these experiences. But there's also that sense of accomplishment that follows them, and that is, for me, what makes them all worthwhile.  

Update on Monday, March 27, 2006 at 10:20AM by Randy Richardson

On Friday, April 7, you can see me stick my head out of that shell when I appear at WriterFest in Wheeling, Illinois, from noon to 4 p.m. I'll be one of a dozen participating authors representing various genres and answering questions about writing, getting published, marketing and other related issues. The event, organized by my friend Michelle Ailene True, a poet and fellow member of the Chicago Writers Association, will be held at Indian Trails Public Library District, 355 S. Schoenbeck Road. Refreshments will be served and there will be a free raffle for gift baskets. The event is free, but space is limited. To register, call (847) 459-4100. Hope to see you there!

2,628 Words Per Dollar

Two thousand six hundred twenty-eight words per dollar. That's what you get for your buck when you buy my book, Lost in the Ivy, from Amazon.com. How do I know this? Because that's what Amazon tells me.

The list price on Amazon is $19.95 and the total number of words is 52,429. That, Amazon calculates, equates to 2,628 words per dollar.

This is one of the new Inside the Book features on Amazon. Just go to the Amazon sales page for Lost in the Ivy, scroll down to Inside the Book and there, among many other things, you'll find a section labeled Concordance and Text Stats. There, in addition to learning how many words per dollar you get when you buy my book, you can also find out the words per ounce, kind of like buying a piece of meat.

There are also stats telling you the book's readability level. On three readability scales, Lost in the Ivy rates between the fifth and seventh grade level. This I credit wholly to my master's degree studies in journalism because it was at that time, in my 18th year of formal education, I was taught to write as if my readers would be sixth graders. (Parental Warning: The fact that your kids could read my book doesn't mean that they should. Amazon neglects to include such an advisory, so I'm putting one here. There are adult language and themes in the book that I didn't learn about until my sophomore year in college and which most kids today probably don't learn about until, well, at least the eighth grade.) 

How does my book stack up? In comparison, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is nothing short of a bargain, coming in at 50,357 words per dollar. But you'll end up paying the price, either in time lost that could have been spent doing other things or in the cost of that new stronger prescription you'll need for your eyeglasses.

My book, however, is a better buy than Pick-Up Lines that Work: Get the Girl Tonight! in which you only get 2,315 words for that same dollar. And, hey, you'll probably get just as many girls by buying my book.