I just published my latest book Sasquatch. Right now, it is available only in the eBook formats from Amazon. For the next 3 days as a free eBook download, so take this opportunity to download it (and tell your friends).

Story Synopsis

When he was a child, Hok’ee had a vision of his guardian animal, Sasquatch. Legend has it, boys who have Sasquatch, as their guardian will grow up to be great men. However, Hok’ee has no social status in his tribe. He lives with his mother as an outcast on the edge of the village. The colour of his skin and the shape of his eyes make him the target of bullies led by his long-time nemesis, Matwau, also known as Three Stones.

His mother tells him that if he is kind to others, Sasquatch will protect him. Hok’ee receives gifts of a knife and a bow from Sasquatch because he is good to others. He falls in love with a young girl, Onida, who has lost her father. To marry her, he must restore the status of his family, by bringing back the scalp of Sasquatch, his one true friend.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

It was my fifth spring. Mother was worried. I had spent the day in bed with a fever. She placed wet furs on my head, as she tried to bring my temperature down, while she waited for the medicine man.

Our wigwam built from spruce poles and birch bark. There were places on the bark where patches of green moss grew. It was warm and dry except when it rained hard in the spring. Water would run down the poles and drip on my head.

In the middle of the night, a creature entered our home. I was lifted up and cradled his arms. Its fur, cooled by the night air, was soothing to my bare skin. It pressed a clay cup to my lips, and in my slumber, I drank a sweet brew. I soon felt better and fell asleep as it rocked me in its arms.

When I woke the next morning, the fever was gone, and my mother was asleep next to my bed. I poked her. “Who was here last night?”

She opened her eyes and smiled. “You mean the medicine man, Hok’ee?”

It was not the face of the village medicine man. For one thing, he had a face with a nose and lips. This being only had two eyes and a thick, dark beard. There was nothing else.

“No, there was someone else here with a hairy face.”

She knelt beside me. “No one else was here last night. You must’ve had a vision of your guardian animal.”

I scratched my head. “A vision?”

“Most children are older and must fast for days in the wilderness to receive their visions.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “Your guardian will help you find your path in life. What animal did you see?”

It occurred to me. “I don’t know. My guardian spirit was black and covered in fur. It held me and fed me from a cup like a human.”

She swallowed hard. “Sasquatch.”

Where to get your copy

Sasquatch is available as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.

My flash fiction story “The Cable” was published by 101 Words. It is another post-apocalyptic flash fiction piece. I seem to like writing those. :)

If you got a minute – it is only 101 words long – you can read it at 101words.org.

[…] Tony Dingwell returns with this hilarious take on a piece of Canadian (or Newfoundland) history.  And knowing how quirky Newfies can be, it was just perfect.  If you know what Screech is, then you’ll understand the title.  Very funny. […]

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Haha. Loved it. I’m reading through the entries and will have the results up in a few hours.

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The corporal standing next to the jeep saluted. “An early night, Colonel?”

I wave my hand. “Damn proprietor was watering down the whiskey and now he has the audacity to close.”

“Tis Sunday morning,” replied Pierre Benoit, a Newfoundlander who Uncle Sam had contracted to build the airfield at Stephenville. “He can’t serve drinks on a Sunday.”

“Is that true, corporal?”

“It’s oh oh thirty hours, sir, Sunday morning.” The corporal dropped his hand.

It was November 1941 and I was sent by the U.S. Air Force to this dry hole. Well, it would have been dry if it weren’t for all this rain, drizzle and fog. The Destroyers for Bases Agreement gave us bases here and in the Caribbean. Why couldn’t I have been posted to Jamaica?

I looked at Benoit. “Where can a fellow get a drink at this time of night?”

“I have a drop at home, if ye don’t mind driving to Port au Port.”

Being under strict orders from the Pentagon to be friendly with the locals, especially the contractors – and feeling more than a little dry – I excepted.

It was a long muddy drive to Port au Port down a road built more for horses than jeeps. We eventually came to a stop. Pierre lived in a modest home by Texas standards, but it was what the local would call a mansion. I told the corporal to stay with the jeep while Benoit and I went inside. I didn’t what anyone to take off with our ride back.

The place was cluttered. Clothes scattered about along with building materials, mostly odds and ends from the base.

He showed me to the kitchen table. I sat on a wooden chair. “Where’s your wife.”

“The misses is upstairs in bed,” he replied before disappearing into a room off the kitchen.

When he returned, he was carrying a syrup bottle. Purity was a local company that made a colorful line of syrups, which was popular with children. However, I have never seen this light brown one flavour.

“What’s that?”

“Rum from Jamaica,” he replied as he half filled the two glasses he was carrying. “I traded three kettles of salt fish for it.”

Along with being the region’s only contractor, Joe also had a shipyard and a schooner. Rum running was a popular past time here. The rum, not being black, meant that it was most likely not the finest Jamaica product, but a watered down version.

My drink looked pitifully weak. “What am I suppose to do with this? Add booze for mix.”

Benoit picked up his glass and threw the rum back as if it was water.

I tapped the table. “Fill ‘er up.” I figured I could make up for the lack of quality of this rum flavored water with quantity.

Benoit grinned and filled my glass.

I held the glass to my lips and threw it back. It hit the back of my throat like a fifty caliber tracer slicing through the night on the way to my gut. “OWWW!”

My first thought was my scream had woken Mrs., but what happen next was worse. My driver, who was outside heard, my scream and came running into the house with his pistol drawn. He pointed the gun at Benoit. “What the Cripes, was that ungodly screech?”

“The screech?” Benoit held out the bottle. “Tis the rum, me son.”

The corporal looked at me and I waved my hand for him to lower his weapon. “Put away that gun before you shoot the only source of a decent drink.”

I put my glass on the table. “I hope you’re still serving.”

***

I woke the next morning on the couch in my office. Apparently, the corporal thought that I would not be able to report to duty, so he put me in my office and closed the blinds. Standing up brought on my hangover. Thankfully, it was quiet. I staggered outside to find my headquarters vacant except for one of Benoit’s men who was quietly painting the mouldings in the hall.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“They’re all out searching for the source of the Screech rum.”

This story was written in response to Jay Dee’s writing challenge known as What Will You Write?. “It’s History” is his sixth challenge. Everyone’s free to join in. Check out his post on the “It’s History” challenge.

Introduction

Kindle Unlimited is a new subscription service offered by Amazon. With Kindle Unlimited, customers can read as many books as they like and keep them as long as they want for a monthly subscription fee currently $9.99.

Authors receive a share of a share of the KDP Select Global Fund once a customer reads more than 10%, or a Kindle Owners’ Lending Library customer downloads their book.

Unlocking the Value of Non-Fiction

This chart shows the sales ranking of books by genre as a percentage of each grouping of 100,000.

Source: Author Earnings / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Only the books in the first 2 stratums have regular sales. The nonfiction books area covers roughly half of the titles available and looks like a matador’s cape. This has left a very large target for the Amazon bull to charge.

Nonfiction Readers

Nonfiction readers, including those who do a lot of research, such as teachers, students, writers, serious hobbyist, etc., tend to access a lot of books. They tend to read short passages as opposed to cover to cover, because most of the time they are just looking for an answer to a question. If they have access to a library, nonfiction readers would go there to read to consult the books on the subject of their research. However, too often, they consult out of date books, which they have purchased over the years for their own library. Kindle Unlimited would give these readers quick and easy access to nonfiction books without to leave the comfort of their chair.

A subscription to Kindle Unlimited is almost must for any serious reader of nonfiction, researcher or student. This makes the service especially valuable for teachers who like to check on the reference sources cited by their students.

Nonfiction Authors

If you are a nonfiction writer with books that had little or no sales in the past 90 days (6 months, or a year), why not make them available for Kindle Unlimited. After all, a chance at some revenue from this potential new source is better than not chance. Who knows, someone might like it enough to order a physical copy (or a teacher might require that their class read it).

I remember having one of my undergraduate papers, appearing in the bibliography of my friend’s master thesis. I got nothing out of it, except the thrill of seeing my name in a thesis. Now just imagine if that paper was published on Amazon with a link from the theist. I could be getting a royalty every time a professor or student looked up my paper and read it. Better yet, I would also benefit from this free advertising if they cited my paper in their papers.

Conclusion

The creation of Kindle Unlimited will allow Amazon to tap the value of their underutilize nonfiction books.

Should the service be used by nonfiction readers, it is essential that authors made their nonfiction books available to Kindle Unlimited to cash in on this source of revenue.

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Introduction

When authors do market research for their book they often look at similar books to see how they are doing in the market. However, Amazon doesn’t post unit book sales figures. At most, they provide the overall ranking of a book. This blog provides a table that can be used to estimate the daily sales based on a book’s overall rank.

Data Source

Hugh Howey published a series of reports on author earnings based on data he received from an author with advanced coding skills who had created a software program that can crawl online bestseller lists and grab mountains of data. He graciously made all of the data available for download and used for any purpose except to profit. So as long as you don’t send me money, we should be good.

Daily Sales

I have stratified the rankings and presented to the average for each strata to fit everything in a simple table.

This table shows the daily unit sales of Kindle books based on stratified rank for February 22, 2014 and April 24, 2014.

Data Limitations

Please be aware of some of the limitations of the data used to compile this table which includes the following.

• The data were collected at a point in time; therefore it may not reflect current sales.
•  Data is only for Kindle e-book sales. Therefore, figures may have to be adjusted upward where the book is being sold on other platforms or printed.
• Ranking can raise or drop sharply in the stratums with unit sales in the low single digits. Therefore, when looking at books with a sales volume in the single digits keep in mind that a single sale would cause book ranked in the millions to jump significantly. Likewise, a book club with a dozen members could also cause a book to suddenly jump in rank.

Conclusions

The table should prove useful if you are looking to get some idea as to the unit sales for a book.

I just published my chapter book Oliver Dingle-Mouse: Business Mouse. It is available in both ebook and paperback formats from Amazon. For the next 3 days as a free ebook download, so take this opportunity to download it (and tell your friends) from Amazon.

Story Synopsis

Oliver Dingle-Mouse has found what he has been looking for in Mr. Rat’s junkyard, a piano. There is only one problem, he doesn’t have any money to buy it. Mr. Rat talks the little mouse into setting up a farming business to earn the money to buy the piano. To make a profit, Oliver enters into partnership with his friends Dianna and Timmy Goo-Cheese and learns what it takes to run a business.

This book uses humour to keep young (and older) readers’ interest. It also has 16 illustrations, some explaining business concepts others for comic relief.

Excerpt

“Then tell me more. Why a farm? Why not a lemonade stand like you had last summer?”

 

“Well,” said Oliver, “I have grown vegetables in the family garden. Therefore, I’m sure that I can do the farming. Selling them can’t be too hard because I see Knoll-Mice younger than I am selling vegetables in the market.” Oliver paused. “About that one hundred silver dollars?”

 

Mr. Dingle-Mouse raised his paw. “Not so fast, why one hundred silver dollars? Why not more? Better still, why not less?”

 

“I thought it was a nice round number.”

 

“No, a nice round number would be zero.” Mr. Dingle-Mouse put his glasses back on his face. “Do you have a business plan?”

 

I needed a laugh this morning, Thanks.

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[…] Tony Dingwell – Great twist at the end.  I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t. It got me.  I should expect the twists, considering how many stories had them.  Nice job. […]

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Conrad opened his eyes to a view of a massive blue globe. He jerked back and twisted around in the microgravity. He touched something solid in front of him. A window.

He pushed against the window and turned around. Conrad scanned the small room, no larger than a public bathroom stall, and empty except for an EV spacesuit and door. He studied the view through the window. Neptune, he thought. How did I get here?

Oh yes, it’s coming back. It was the Inspiration Mars Flyby in 2021, which moved him to apply for the Grand Solar System Flyby. How was he to know that they were not looking for astronauts, but an astro-blogger? It seemed only yesterday that he left Uranus, but it had been three and a half years. How time flies when you’re in hibernation.

First things first. “Tito!”

There was a pause before Tito responded. “Earth spaceship Tito online.”

“What is your status?”

“All systems operating within normal parameters.”

Good, he was not going to die. “Are we still on course?”

“Your present course will take you out of the solar system.”

He was to have used Neptune’s gravity to head back. “Can you make a course correction to take me back to Earth?”

“Affirmative.”

“Change course.”

There was a rumble and the ship lurched to one side as the thrusters came to life for a twenty-second burn.

Now that he was back on course. It was time to get to work blogging.

“Tito, record the following for transmission.”

“Recording.”

“To Ground Control. Have arrived at Neptune. The ship is in good shape, but was off course. Someone down there was asleep at the wheel. I have made the necessary course correction. Will transmit again once I have read my messages.”

“Tito, transmit message.”

“Message transmitted.”

Now Conrad could catch up on the news from home. Was he a grandfather? Did his youngest finish college? How many thousands of messages from around the world had he received since Uranus?

“Tito, what’s the inbox count?”

“One.”

“Only one message?”

“Affirmative. Last message received 42 months ago.”

Disappointment was an understatement. “Read message.”

“Commander Conrad, congratulations on reaching Neptune. Unfortunately, our funding dried up as you were leaving Uranus and entering hibernation. By the time you read this, all of our equipment will be shut down, including the space station and satellite dishes. Our funds were tight from the beginning and we didn’t think you would get this far. So never gave you enough fuel to return and programmed Tito not to inform you. On behalf of all of us at Ground Control, may God be with you.”

Conrad floated about the empty cabin. The message explained why there was never a problem with the ship until now. He watched as Neptune filled the window. There was nothing he could do, or was there? He slowly put on the EV suit and stood by the door. “Tito, override safety protocols and open the door.”

The door blew away. Conrad was sucked out and began his fall to the surface of Neptune.

“Incoming emergency message from Ground Control, auto read,” announced Tito over the suit’s radio. “Commander Conrad, congratulations on reaching Neptune. Sorry about the glitch in the message system. We were hacked.”

This story was written in response to Jay Dee’s writing challenge known as What Will You Write?. As host, he begins a writing prompt on his blog, I Read Encyclopedias for Fun that we writers are to finish. “Neptune” is his first challenge. Everyone’s free to join in. Check out his post on the “Neptune” challenge.

Cover

My flash fiction story “Hello, Is Anybody There?” was published by T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog. It is a post-apocalyptic flash fiction about the last participant of a nuclear war, who calls every phone number looking for survivors.

If you got 5 minutes, you can read it at http://wp.me/p4bfXQ-1J

The chess board on the cover shows the game that is in progress as the story opens. It is a chess puzzle if you care to solve it.

As an auditor of financial statements and organizational performance for over 30 years and I can say that the people and organisations who make it, plan for their success then follow their plans. I have seen many that fail and almost all either had no plans or had an unworkable plan.

As this year opens, I thought I would share with you a simple strategy for developing a plan for success in 2014.

Setting Your Goal

Start with your end goal in mind. A goal is the specific desired result you wish to achieve over the next 3 or more years. A typical goal for a writer could be one of the following.

• Within 3 years to publish my novel
• Within 5 years to be making a living from writing
• Within 7 years to be a best-selling author

Selecting Your Indicators of Progress

According to Tom Peters, “What gets measured gets done.” Therefore, you need to select indicators to monitor your progress towards your goal.

An indicator is a particular value used to measure activities, outputs or outcomes. Indicators should be a reflection of the things you can reasonably control. Examples of these indicators include the following.

• Number of words written
• Number of books sold
• Dollars of royalties earned

It is important to select indicators that have a logical connection to your goal. If your goal were to finish your novel, words written would be a good indicator, but not if you want to be a best-selling author where you need to focus on book sales. If you what to increase sales of your book, consider adding an indicator regarding your social network such as the size of your mailing list.

Defining Your Objectives

An objective is a one-year measurable milestone, which indicates a change or benefit that you hope to accomplish on your way to achieving your goal. An indicator should follow the objective statement so that you can track your progress. You should have an objective for each of your indicators. Examples of objectives include the following.

• By the end of the year, I will have written 100,000 words.
• By the end of the year, I will have submitted my novel.
• By the end of the year, I will be making an average of 5 cents a word.

Creating Monthly Targets

Ever notice how having a deadline pushes you to get things done. Creating monthly targets will allow you to pace yourself throughout the year and the monthly deadlines will help to keep you on track. Make sure that you consider all factors when setting your targets.

Say your objective is to write 100,000 words and you plan to take August off and to participate in the National Novel Writing Month. Then you need to write 5,000 words a month except for August when you are on holidays and November when you’re going for 50,000.

Checking Reality

Don’t set yourself up for failure before you start. Before committing to your plan, check to ensure that your objectives are within the resources available to you. Consider the following.

• Your past performance – If you had difficulty reaching 50,000 words this year, you might want to reconsider 100,000 in 2014.
• Your financial capacity – Can you afford a copy editor and cover designer for your Indie book.
• Your time – Is there anything on the horizon that will take up more of your time, say …
• Your health – Will you have to slow down because of an ailment.

Monitoring Yourself

Now that you have a workable writing plan for 2014, all you need to do to reach your goal is to follow your plan. Compare your progress to your targets each month to keep you on track and reach your 2014 objectives and bring you closer to your long-term goals.