When Bloggers Try to be Journalists

 

When you read a professional newspaper or magazine, it's not often that you find errors whether it be in spelling or grammar. That's because they have proofreaders, people who are paid to apply the their knowledge of words and the rules of grammar.

Typically, bloggers like me do not have the luxury of having these experts. It, therefore, falls on our shoulders to ensure that such errors do not creep into the text undetected.

Of course, the main defense against these kinds of gaffes is knowledge of the language. If you know the rules, it's possible to write correctly and do it right the first time.

If you know the rules, even if you make a mistake, you'll be able to catch them during the proofreading stage.

Now, I'm not an English writing expert. I make mistakes from time to time, mostly due to fatigue. After writing for the better part of the day, it's possible for me to commit a faux pas and miss them when I go back over the article. That's why I recommend proofreading in spurts or for a few minutes at a time. Fifteen minutes of working followed by three to five minutes of rest is fine for me.

Sadly, I don't always follow my own advice. After finishing my first novel, Legend of the Moon, I did my proofreading, sometimes following my advice and sometimes completely forgetting it. I went through the book several times, finding errors at each pass. After about six proofreading passes, I finally uploaded it to Smashwords. A few months later, I downloaded a copy (because I accidentally deleted my original) and found more errors!

PROOFREADING 85,000 WORDS

Sometimes I envy those people who just shrug and say, "Oh well, they know what I'm talking about anyway." Their lives seem so much easier.

But that's not who I am. I don't make corrections because of some OCDian urge or to impress people. I care that people won't misinterpret what I'm trying to convey. It might turn out to be an expensive or career-ending mistake.

In 1872, the US government decreed that imported "fruit, plants" were tax exempt. What they meant was that "fruit-plants" were tax exempt. They lost almost $40,000,000 before the error was corrected.

In 2008, Chile printed a batch of 50 Peso coins. The Chile on the coin was spelled "Chiie." This flubb was world news for some time and resulted in the general manager of the mint being fired along with several other workers.

Granted, the chances of your articles having such far-reaching circumstances or have life-changing influence might be very small. But as those people involved in the examples above discovered, that's what they also thought.

Updated Cover for U-1215

U-1215 was published in August 20, 2016. For two years, it hardly moved. No one was buying it and I even thought of taking it out and rewriting it to make it interesting.

Then, one day, I read an article about one author whose book also wasn't selling very well. She had someone make another cover and she republished it. Thereafter, the book's sales soared and continues to sell very well.

So, it got me to thinking. Could my book benefit from an improved cover as well? I set out to try.

First, I changed the color to blue. Blue represents the color of the sea so that seemed appropriate. Then, I made the color darker towards the bottom since that's what happens the deeper into the sea you go.

Second, I made the text larger so as to be more visible without overdoing it. I changed the subtitle to all caps to also make it a bit more visible. I decided to enlarge my name and change the font because I read that you should advertise yourself but don't shout it out by making your name larger than the title. So, I chose a taller and thinner font without using the bold feature.

The silhouette of the submarine is mostly the same except I removed a little bump near the bow. That bump was supposed to represent the folded forward diving planes (only people who know submarines would know that) but I reasoned that, since the sub was already under water, it should follow that the diving planes would be deployed and be invisible when viewed from the side.

The last modification was that I made the image wider. That was done to satisfy the requirements of the Apple iBookstore of having the image in specific dimensions.

This is the finished product alongside the old one for easier comparison.

I uploaded the updated cover in 2018. Did it work? Did it improve sales? Yes, it did!

Within a few months of uploading, U-1215 sales started improving quite dramatically. It's not a best seller, mind you, but I'm very please with it. Now I'm thinking of changing the covers of my other books as well.

(click on the image to Smashwords website)

My Smashwords Sales Figures

I've been neglecting my blog.

When Facebook removed the Notes feature, I told myself to use Blogger in place of the Notes feature. Sorry to say, I haven't been doing it. So, hoping to get things started again, I'll post a few figures I got from my sales from my books in Smashwords.

So, according to the numbers, I sold 578.3 books from 2011 to 2022. What's with the 0.3? How can you sell one-third of a book?

Those sales came from Scribd. They offer a partial sale (a small percentage of a book) for $0.10 with an option to buy the whole book if you liked it.

Out of those 578.3 books, I made $279.87 (USD). Why so little for the quantity of books? Did each book cost $0.48?

No, a large part of those books were sold for free. Yes, free. One of the advice from other authors, as well as Smashwords, was to offer books for free from time to time so that readers would get to know the author on the premise that, if they found the books interesting, they would later buy the author's other books. One book in particular, Travel Mashups and Mishaps was free for four years. You can see the effect in the graph below (from 2014 to 2017). Sales during those years went sky high (relatively speaking) but my earnings hardly went up. In fact, they went down.

In 2018, I decided the free-book-technique was not working so I put prices on all my books. You can see the effect right away. Sales dropped but earnings climbed. So, this practice of setting your prices to free doesn't work, at least for me. Book buyers who see that a book is free will likely get the book, but it probably doesn't give the author points. The buyer might even lower their opinion of them. It was that or I went overboard with the free-pricing thing.

You'll also notice that earnings spiked in 2020 and 2021, the first two years of the pandemic. Other authors also experienced increased sales during this period. It was probably because people bought more ebooks to keep them occupied during the lockdown. With the pandemic seeming to wind down, sales are going back down to pre-Covid levels.

So, in addition to checking my sales, I also checked a few other information that was available in the reports. The United States was my number one customer by a whoping 80.7%. The United Kingdom came in second at 6.7%, Australia was third at 3.9%, and Canada was fourth at 1.9%. Since all my books are in English it follows that 93.3% of my sales would come from English-speaking countries. My country, the Philippines, came in at ninth place with only 0.6%.

Next, I checked who was doing better at distributing my books. The Apple iBookstore and Barnes and Noble shared top spot at 39.1% each. Smashwords, which is where I publish my books only came in third with 12.1%. That's understandable because Apple and Barnes & Noble have a larger customer base than Smashwords but I find it sad that the company that gave me my start at being an author isn't getting the lion's share of my sales.

Finally, a comparison of how my books perform against each other. Note that this isn't a fair comparison since they weren't written at the same time and they're priced differently.

In terms of quantity, my first book, Travel Mashups and Mishaps (2011), is number one in terms of number of books sold. Remember, however, that this book was free for a long time and I also priced it at $0.99 for some time, hoping to get buyers interested in my other books.

By far, U-1215 (2016) is my biggest earner at $226.59, and it's still going strong. At first, it didn't sell very well, selling only three copies in two years. Then, I changed the cover in 2018 and that's when it took off.

My favorite book, Legend of the Moon, isn't doing very well. It is eighth in terms of books sold but it is third in terms of earnings. That's because I never priced it at free. I'm planning to change the cover also, like what I did with U-1215. That might catch the attention of readers more.

You might be wondering about Hamelin. It's sold 18.1 books but only made $1.27. Similarly, God's Shower of Blessings sold five copies but earned zero. Both of these books also went through a free-book phase. That's the reason for the discrepancies.

So, there you have it. Twelve years of writing books and richer by $279.87. A pittance compared to what the more famous writers are earning but that's okay. I get a small amount every month and those earnings have bailed me out a few times.

I could earn more by writing more books but I've been lazy of late. I haven't written a new book in four years. 'Need to change that. The more books you write, the more you'll earn. Of course, you have to be a good writer and one of the ways to get better is to write more books.