Category Archives: Bookselling

Bookselling, Publishing

Kings and curly quotes

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I forgot to show you a picture of the new, fully realized, paperback version of King of Rogaland. So here it is. That’s a pretty good cover, I think.

I also think I told you I’m working on an Amazon edition of The Year of the Warrior in paperback. At the risk of sounding self-satisfied, I’m actually kind of impressed with it. It’s a good story – grabs the reader and keeps the action going. I’m not sure I’ve improved a whole lot as a writer in the 25-plus years since the thing was published.

I was taken aback to discover that the final draft I’m working with – as well as the privately printed version I’ve been handselling for a few years – features “dumb quotes” rather than “smart quotes.” You probably know what that means – smart quotes are the curly ones, curving forward and backward, that you find in printed material, which MS Word usually creates for you automatically. Dumb quotes are what you see in this post. Somehow (I think it must have been during the text’s brief sojourn as a Google Doc) it lost its smarts. And I’m embarrassed to offer the book to the Amazon public in such a state. It would be a blow to my aforementioned self-satisfaction.

So I did a web search and found a method for converting them back. To my astonishment, it worked. Now I’m trying to figure out how to do the one-slash quotation marks and apostrophes.

I’ll probably mess it up. I need to save backup draft.

I’m hoping I can handle the stress.

Bookselling, Fiction, Publishing

Paperback woes on a rainy day

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The Norwegian word for “busy” is “travelt,” which always makes me thing of a crowded road. Which is pretty much what I feel like right now. I have a) my “novel writing” work, which currently means formatting books for paperback, b), the magazine I’m editing for the Valdres Samband, the ethnic organization that hired me for this purpose, c) my translation work on the Sigrid Undset biography, and d) the monthly newsletter for my Sons of Norway lodge (which won’t take long but should have been finished by now).

This morning it rained. The first rain we’ve had around here in months. It’s been raining all day, except for when it snowed (alas for the trick-or-treaters!). When I was done with my novel writing this morning, I happened to look outside and found that the first four of my cartons of orphaned books had arrived from Nordskog (see last night’s story). I have an idea the mail carrier was unhappy about being made to carry those heavy cartons, because he left them on the very outside edge of the porch, where the drip from the awning would pour straight down on them.

Some of the cartons were soaking wet; all were damp. I brought them in immediately and freed the books from the cartons. They’re air drying in my living room now, as are the cartons.

Most of the books are fine. A few have covers curled. But I’m getting these things for pennies on the dollar, and don’t expect to outlive the supply anyway.

Ten more cartons arrived this afternoon (perfectly dry, I’m happy to say). Also I finally got my paperback copies of The Elder King from Amazon. I’d been looking forward to that – photo above.

And… I got a surprise. Some moron – and there’s no moron but me on this job – accidentally put the wrong title in the page headers. All the right-hand pages in this edition say at the top that the book is Hailstone Mountain, which it is not.

I wouldn’t have this problem if I’d done the prudent thing and ordered a review copy for myself before releasing it. But I lack the patience. Now I have this.

It’s easily fixed. I’ll republish it tomorrow. Which means the book will be briefly unavailable. The few copies already sold will go down in history as errata, no doubt to become sought-after collectors’ items.

Bookselling, Fiction, Publishing

Start the presses! ‘King of Rogaland’ in paper!

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The hits just keep on coming – as many people must have said in the radio business, but I don’t think I ever did, back when I was in the game.

I am forging my way through my Viking books, and can herewith announce that the paperback version of King of Rogaland is now obtainable from Amazon.com. This completes the whole set (sort of, details below), except for the final book, The Baldur Game, which still awaits its cover art.

And then there are the first two books, which present complications of their own.

West Oversea, Book 3 of the series, is in an odd limbo at this juncture. Nordskog, its publisher, is – sadly – going out of business. They have kindly returned all rights to me, and are selling me their entire stock of paperbacks at a steep discount. That’s about 20 cartons at last count. I’ll have my little house packed with them, I guess, which is (I think) the final stage of deterioration in a self-published author’s life cycle. I’m working now at formatting the book for an Amazon version of my own. I think selling this stock of Nordskog paperbacks through Amazon would create a distribution challenge for which I’m not equipped. So I’ll just create a fresh one, and sell my Nordskog volumes at Viking events. I expect they should last me another 40 years or so.

And then there’s The Year of the Warrior. I’m currently getting the paper version printed by a private printer, but I’m going to try to get that one out through Amazon too. I think it’ll be cheaper, but the juxtaposition of Baen’s electronic version with my paperback will, I have no doubt, raise unanticipated problems.

We suffer for our art in many ways. This is not one of the worst. Yet.

Bookselling, Fiction

Major publishing news!

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Due to tremendous popular demand, my novel The Elder King is now available in paperback form.

If you order it now, it’ll take a few days to arrive, as the engines of industry must be reconfigured to accommodate the expected sales rush.

But it’s in the system. It’s official.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Personal appearance alert: The Great Northern Viking Festival

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I’ll be doing a Viking event this weekend, and this time I’m giving you a whole day’s notice to make your plans to attend!

Because I love you and want you to be happy.

The Great Northern Viking Festival will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 20th, in Mankato, Minnesota. I plan to be there Saturday only, and only for the “family friendly” daytime hours. In the evening, I’m informed, they will let their hair down a little (those who haven’t inflicted History Channel haircuts on themselves). I myself am too old – and too conventional – for such shenanigans.

This is the first year this event has been held. I have no idea what to expect, really. Several Viking groups will be present, each doing its own peculiar thing.

For all I know, it will be a heathen thing, and I’ll have to flee like a monk at Lindisfarne, shaking the dust from my feet as I scamper. But we’ll see. I’ve loaded my car with a substantial supply of good and uplifting books, either written or translated by me, which ought to raise the tone in any case.

Come by if you’re in the area and feel like checking it out.

Bookselling, Publishing

The ‘Mountain’ in my hand

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The package arrived yesterday. At last, after many a year, I can hold a paper version of Hailstone Mountain in my tremblous hand.

The book is thinner than I expected. I suppose that’s because of the 6”x9” format – more words per page. I’m used to thinking in terms of what’s called “mass market paperbacks,” the roughly pocket-sized books you generally see on racks in stores (or used to). For some reason, we self-publishers seem to gravitate toward a larger size. Perhaps we’re compensating.

Maybe the cream paper that I didn’t select would have been a little thicker, too.

In any case, my books are my children, and I’ve known this one only electronically up to now. Like having a kid whose mother took custody and then moved to California – you only know him through Zoom calls. Now at last he’s made his way to my doorstep. He needs money, of course.

I wonder how I should deal with selling these things at Viking events, as one by one they get instantiated in the physical universe. My bestseller at events is Viking Legacy. After that, it’s The Year of the Warrior (the paper version I have printed, not yet available on Amazon). West Oversea comes in third. This one follows in the sequence. I figure demand for each successive book should be smaller than for the previous one. I anticipate carrying a couple cartons of the later books of the saga with me to events, but I don’t imagine I’ll have to stock as many of those. It’s already a lot of cartons to lug around.

At the festival in Green Bay, I was signing somebody’s book and they complimented my handwriting. This surprised me. I’ve always considered my handwriting awful, for the practical reason that it’s hard to read. My writing may possess a certain grace of form, but it’s not pragmatically effective.

I wish my art to be useful as well as aesthetic. But not enough to write slower.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Festival report, Green Bay 2024

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The Midwest Viking Festival in Green Bay is, once again, history (in two senses). I made the four-hour-plus drive to and from without incident, and had an excellent time.

I shared a motel room with the experimental archaeologist who oversaw the construction of the Viking House, on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus, that is the centerpiece of the encampment. His name is Owen Christianson and he is a physicist (I really didn’t understand his descriptions of his work, but it has something to do with electromagnetics) by day. He’s also a recognized folk artist, and I once took his class in making wooden stave vessels. He was by himself this year because his wife was unable to come along. I was somewhat daunted by his credentials at first, but we actually found a lot to talk about, and parted good friends.

The festival itself runs Friday and Saturday. Friday is a day for school groups; it went okay, but was rather quiet. I feared we were losing public enthusiasm. But Saturday, as it was last year, was a madhouse, and people bought up nearly my whole stock of Viking Legacy (I’d brought extra this year) along with a fair quantity of my novels. I was in no wise disappointed.

As is more and more the case these days, the hard part for me was setting up, tearing down, and packing the car. I’m getting too old for this stuff, I fear, but I expect to keep at it for a while. I’m too proud to hang it up, I imagine, until I actually hurt myself. (Much thanks to Andy and Missy, especially, for helping me tote that barge and lift that bale.)

We got handsome coverage from a local TV station, and I was fortunate enough to get a lot of the air time. I’m the devilishly handsome man in the blue tunic, in case you were wondering.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Into enemy territory — the Midwest Viking Festival in Green Bay

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I am, of course, keenly aware of the irony of holding a Viking festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers. Yet so it is. Life does not always make sense, as I think Nietzsche observed.

In any case, I plan (by God’s travel mercies) to be at the Midwest Viking Festival this Friday and Saturday, selling my books in the ancient Norse manner. I guess I’ll also be doing some kind of presentation. Come and see if you’re in the area.

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing

‘Hailstone Mountain’ in Paperback

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This is to announce the momentous (or mountainous) news that my novel Hailstone Mountain is at last available in corporeal, paperback form.

I’m working at getting all my books incarnated, but this is a start.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

A good Hostfest for Vikings

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This is me with a Norwegian Forest Cat. I’m the bigger one, but only slightly bigger.

I think I can do my promised post on Høstfest tonight, before time and senescence wipe all recollection from my mind. I’m gradually recovering from the rigors of travel, and expect to be fit for duty on Thursday, when I have to drive four hours to Green Bay, for the Midwest Viking Festival on Friday and Saturday.

How was Høstfest 2024? From my point of view (and I think I speak for all the Vikings), it was a smash. Among the highlights were these:

First of all, we were in a new location. Over the years (and a lot of years it’s been in my case) the festival has shoehorned the Viking encampment into any space they could find after the really important exhibitors had been accommodated. But now at last they placed us next to the Log Cabin (used, I understand, for Fur Trapper rendezvouses), right across from the main entrance to the exhibition/entertainment building.

This meant, first of all, that people could find us. The chief complaint we’ve gotten from Viking afficionados over the years is that nobody ever seemed to know where we were. This year we were front and center – and the visitor numbers were correspondingly gratifying.

It also meant that we were in the fresh air, where – strictly speaking – Vikings belong. An American log cabin isn’t so different from a Scandinavian one after all (Swedish immigrants invented them), and the weather was pleasant (sometimes, in fact, pretty darn warm).

Now if you know me at all, you know that I’m not numbered among the Great Outdoorsmen of this world. But even a couch tuber like me could feel the difference, spending four days in God’s sunshine and fresh air, as opposed to four days on concrete under fluorescent lights (often breathing the dust of a horse barn). I was tired at the end, but I didn’t feel as if I’d spent the time confined to a jail cell, as in the past.

I also sold a good number of books. And the local hosts who gave me a bed for four nights were extremely pleasant and congenial.

Each day, at 2:45 p.m., I went to an inside stage to sit on a stool next to a very beautiful woman who interviewed me about my writing and translating, as well as Viking history. I could tell she was in awe of me, but retained my dignity.

I even found a vendor who sold me some Norwegian Kvikk Lunsj candy bars, which are like Kit Kat except really, really good.

I drove home weary in body but quite fizzy in spirit, as Bertie Wooster might have put it. And as usual I stopped for lunch on the way with my friend (and commenter on this blog) Dale Nelson, which is always a pleasure.

I suppose Høstfest 2024 could have gone better for me, but offhand I can’t think how.