A Roach Story

This was back in high school or thereabouts.

I was in my room, getting dressed for school. I had just slipped into my pants when I spied a cockroach on the table. I have no fear of roaches, so I took one of my slippers and approached it to smash it to a pulp.

As I got closer, I slowed down so that it wouldn't be spooked into running away. I kept my eye on it, with the slipper held up to around head level, ready to swing as soon as I got into range.

But the roach was smart.

It turned around to face me and launched itself into the air...toward me. Taken by surprise, I tried to swat it in midair, but it was too close. I felt it land on my undershirt, so I dropped the slipper and tried to brush it off. It was too quick, however, and my movements failed to connect with it.

Suddenly, it disappeared.

I swung left and right, trying to find it, but it was nowhere in sight. It had escaped, but I thought, "I'll get you yet." I put my slippers on and went to the closet to get my uniform polo.

Just as I moved, I felt something.

The cockroach was climbing up my pant leg. Worse than that, it was INSIDE my pant leg! I quickly clamped down on my thigh to prevent it from getting even higher. I didn't want it anywhere near my delicate parts.

I began stomping my foot on the floor. After a few stomps, it lost its hold on my pants and fell out. I didn't know this and continued to stomp, which resulted in my foot coming down on it.

Roachminator strikes again!

Don't Tell Your Kids to Get High Grades

 

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 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 it 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, I can commit a faux pas and miss it 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 flub 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 having a 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 on 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 an 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 continue 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 pleased 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 the sales of 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 were 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 the 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 for 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.

Speech Fodder

I'm not going to start with how to speak, how to use gestures, how to use words, etc. You can't speak in front of people if you don't have anything to say, so the first installment of this series is techniques for finding speech fodder or speech topics.

Probably the two most common complaints I hear from people are:

• I don't know what to say, and
• I don't have anything interesting to say.

The two, I believe, are related, maybe first cousins. What they might really be saying is, "I don't know what to say that will interest people."

That's fine. You're new to public speaking and struggling to come up with a speech that will keep your audience awake. It's a valid concern. I've seen speakers who got flustered when they saw one of the audience yawning during their speech. Don't worry, we'll get to tips to address those in future posts.

If someone asks you to deliver a speech, one of the first things you have to know is what's the occasion.

If your former teacher asks you to speak during your old high school's commencement exercises, you know that you're expected to talk about your own high school life, how your teachers influenced your decisions in life, and you're also expected to give an inspiring message to the students and the rest of the audience. Knowing that will sort of narrow down your choices for a message.

The second thing you need to know is, who is the audience?

What are their ages? Are they all one gender? Are they all members of an organization or company? What language/s do they speak?

So, taking the same example as the previous example, if it's a high school graduation ceremony, your audience will consist of students between 15 to 17 years of age, parents ranging from maybe 35 to 50, teachers from 21 to around 60, a few relatives, friends, school officials, and guests.

With that diverse an audience, you might need to choose who you are going to address with your speech. Will it be the students? Will it be both the students and the parents? Or perhaps everyone? Which one/s you address will make your choice of topics either narrower or wider.

The third thing you need to know is, what do you know?

It's very difficult, even impossible, to talk about something you know nothing about. There might be people who can talk about a topic and look like an expert, but not everyone can do that, and, really, no one should do that. If you're found out, your reputation will be lost, among other things.

One of the things I hear people complain about is, "I don't have anything interesting to say." Don't put yourself down. Using that example of being asked to speak at a graduation ceremony. What can you say? What about your everyday experiences during high school? It doesn't even need to be inside the school, like you're on your way to or coming home from school. What about that science experiment that went wrong? It doesn't have to be a spectacular error. If you found it funny, others might find it funny too.

And stories don't need to come from you. You can approach some of your classmates and ask them for anecdotes.

"But I want to inspire these kids!"

That's great, but it's difficult to find inspiration in a story that isn't there yet. Create your speech and find the inspiring message there.

What are things you know? Things that you've experienced, things you've heard about, things you've read, things you've seen, there are all sorts of sources for your message. You just need to make some effort in finding them.

But I wasn't born with speaking skills.

Congratulations, all of us were born knowing only how to cry when we were hungry, in pain, or uncomfortable. The only difference between speakers and you is, speakers learned how to speak, and if they can learn, so can you. 

Introduction to the Public Speaking Series

I'm going to deviate from the original purpose of this blog by posting about public speaking instead of sharing stories. I joined Toastmasters International back in 2003, and they helped me a lot in learning how to speak in front of an audience. I am an introvert by nature, but becoming a public speaker helped me make better presentations, learn how to conduct seminars and workshops, and accept speaking engagements. This series is intended for those fledgling speakers out there who are just starting or those who already have some experience but want to improve.

Just as a backgrounder regarding my experience. I joined Toastmasters in September 2003, but even after joining, I didn't pluck up the courage to deliver my first speech until January 2005. How's that for being nervous? 😀

Once I got started, however, I began delivering speeches every month or two, and with each speech, my nervousness was slowly being conquered.

Conquering that fear, unfortunately, was only half the battle. You can get up in front of people and speak with confidence, but if you can't connect with the audience, if you don't hold their attention, and if you don't touch them with your words, you might as well speak in front of a pile of rocks. So, learning how to speak is the other half of becoming a public speaker.

So this series of posts (it wouldn't be practical to put everything on one post), I'm going to give you tips for:

• choosing your speech topic;
• getting over the fear of speaking in front of people;
• organizing your speech;
• speaking with passion;
• using words;
• using gestures;
• using your voice;
• using props; and
• inspiring people.

I'm not sharing this on my Facebook page simply because I'm going to convert this to a video series. If people read this by chance, that's fine. Some people prefer reading to watching, so these posts will be perfect for them.