Category Archives: publishing

August 1, 2019 · 4:02 pm

When Stupidity Needs Fixin’

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00DL1X14C

So, after having books available on Amazon since 2012, I finally figured out how to update my Amazon author’s page. Stupid me. I could’ve been using this to help me market books for seven years now.

Now, if you click on the link in the caption of the above picture, you can look at my updated author’s page with 9 of the 10 books I have already published. I couldn’t add Aeroquest because that miserable thing is now out of print, and Publish America is finally sued out of existence. But like Frankenstein, I have the means to resurrect that monster. I will now cut it up into at least three separate books and republish it on Amazon.

But that book #10 thing will have to wait. I will soon be publishing When the Captain Came Calling. I have just stupidly warned you now of an upcoming publishing event that you will probably hide from and fear because, comedy or not, there are some very sad parts in it that I have alluded to in my blog. I am a regular Tom Holland when it comes to letting cats out of bags.

I also have to figure out what to do about Magical Miss Morgan. Page Publishing sent me notice that I have to pay $50 to get them to continue offering print-on-demand copies of my book and e-book copies of my book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I don’t figure I have to pay them for continuing to do nothing but make profits from my book. My publishing contract says clearly that I only have to call them to get all my publishing rights back and put the thing on Amazon KDP. This is the course of action that I have stupidly chosen to do. I have called them seven times now, stating clearly on their answering machine that I want the rights back. They continue not to answer my calls or call me back. They also continue to offer that book without any kind of notice that I have not paid for that priviledge for the last six months.

Stupidity continues to pile up in every corner of the box I put my novel-writing in. But I continue to fight the battle. I made $1.06 as an author in July.

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July 8, 2019 · 5:09 pm

When Readers Respond

I recently got my very first unsolicited review on a book I had written when Mr. Ted Bun, one of the leaders of the nudist writer group on Twitter gave me a five star review on Recipes for Gingerbread Children.

I was grateful and reviewed one of his books on Twitter in return.

But it was totally unsolicited. I didn’t even know any of my book promotions had penetrated such an odd corner of the internet. The story does have nudists in it, but that is not what the book is really about. Mr. Bun acknowledged that much in his review, and still liked it and called it well-written.

My first Amazon book promotion, offering the Kindle version of Snow Babies for free, produced the same kind of fruit. I started by sending a paperback copy to the girl I grew up with that I named the main character after. Valerie read the book to her grandchildren and then sent me this message;

Valerie– Hi Michael! I wanted to let you know that I finished reading your book a couple of days ago, and that I thought it was really good! You used so many colorful descriptions of the characters, that I felt like I could really picture the whole scene! I also enjoyed how you used several people’s names and surrounding towns from our past that brought back good memories. It kept my interest and made me excited to keep reading to see how things turned out! I appreciated how you ended it, too! Thanks again, so much for sharing it with me. I plan to share it with a friend of mine to read and then return to me! Do the Rowan and Belmond libraries have copies of your books? I would be happy to talk to the Belmond library about it, if you haven’t already! I will spread the word, and keep writing! Val

Me– I donated a couple of books to Rowan and one to Belmond.  But I have written a lot more since

They don’t have Snow Babies.   I am so glad you liked the book.  It is one of the best things I have ever written.

Valerie– You can be proud of your hard work! Next time I’m in the library, I will take Snow Babies with me and show them. I know they like to support local authors! 🙂

Me– Thank you for the help. I really appreciate it.

Then I find this tweet on Twitter from a fellow author who responded to my book promotion week.

She read Snow Babies and loved it and shared this review with me before she posted it on Amazon.

Headline: This book has a potential to become a classic

The story takes you to Norwall, a secluded midwestern town where people are expecting a snow blizzard to arrive in couple of hours. Among strangers coming to the town during the blizzard are four very special boys, a hobo, a bus driver, a drunken old lady, a stupid salesman, a couple of newly-weds and a lady following the four boys. Each of them, as well as the local people, has their own interesting story and their stories start to intertwine while the town gets buried in snow.

Some from the locals and the newcomers start to see white naked kids in the snow. In the course of events, they learn that those white kids are so called “snow babies”. According to what people say, those who see snow babies, are supposed to die during the blizzard.

The author has a talent for depicting situations in an impressive manner, so they can be humorous and touching at the same time.  His mature narrative style enables you to learn deeply but in a light way about individual characters and understand their motives. Interesting are the hobo´s droppings of philosophical reflections and life wisdoms from Walt Whitman’s book. Simultaneously, in connection with snow babies, the author keeps you in suspense until the end. The story is not predictable, and the ending left me smiling and absorbed in thought. 

I honestly fell in love with this book from the first page. It is like a fresh breeze compared to a number of today’s books written in similar patterns.

*****

I am amazed that people are beginning to read my books and like them… even love them. I wasn’t expecting that to happen until after I was dead. It is a good feeling that took me by surprise.

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July 1, 2019 · 5:18 pm

Mickey is on Twitter

One of the things I was taught by the good people of I-Universe Publishing is that writers do Twitter. They set me up with a Twitter account that never got followed by real people and got no traction of any definable kind.

There are obviously magic spells out there somewhere that help you sell copies of your beloved first real novel if only you are willing to go on Twitter to engage… to sell yourself and your books… to trolls… and nudists and other writers and nudists who are writers… and, inexplicably, the Norwegian Branch of the Tom Hiddleston as Loki Fan Club. In order to do this I ended up having to establish my own Twitter account to handle what the I-Universe account couldn’t. What a mistake that was!

I have after six years finally gotten past the 2,000 follower mark. I have sold a precious few copies of more than one of my books. And I have learned what a horrific alternate universe Twitter actually is.

Trying to sell my books to Twitter followers who seem like the kind of person interested in reading YA novels full of humor and fantasy and goofy stuff, obviously generates more marriage proposals than sales.

Apparently, young women on Twitter are looking for husbands and lovers online. It you answer their direct messages thinking they are women interested in your writing, they will aggressively try to convince you that they have fallen in love with you, one even saying this without asking for a better picture of me than the cartoon I use to portray myself. They ignore the fact that you have been married for a quarter of a century. They ignore the protestations that you are only on Twitter to sell books, and ask you to send them money for an airplane ticket so they can come to where you live and have an affair with you… even though you protest that you are married and don’t have money for airplane tickets even if you wanted to have an affair with a young lady who could be your granddaughter age-wise. One essential function on Twitter is learning how to block someone. Ooh! That was a lifesaver. Learning who not to answer is useful too.

Pirates often take your money via selling you insurance.

And women are not the only ones with dangerous schemes to take your money away from you.

I was Twitter-friended by Arab royalty. Prince Hamdan of Brunei wanted to give me money as part of his charity work to salvage the image of his royal family. He offered to put thousands of dollars of oil money in my bank account just because he liked me and felt sorry for me. All I had to do was give him my online bank account number. I may have told Arabian royalty that I had a fatal disease that made me forget all my bank account numbers and would cause me to die before he could get a reply sent back to me. I stupidly gave him no bank information what-so-ever. And my bank account audibly breathed a sigh of relief.

So, I have successfully now used Twitter to sell copies of Snow Babies and Recipes for Gingerbread Children. I have become a member of Twitter’s #writingcommunity. I have also become a member of a group called Writers Without Clothes. (#FF#naturist fiction by: @Mr_Ted_Bun, @buffprofwally, @CalowAndrew, @AuthorMatBlack, @NakedDan, @smdenham3 and @mbeyer51 (growing list!)) They offered me a chance to join their group because they liked the nudists in my book Recipes for Gingerbread Children, and because they learned I have written for nudist websites and do much of my writing in the nude. I recently also got a tweet from a fellow author who is reading Snow Babies and loves it. She says it is a well-written book, high praise from another published author.

So, I intend to keep writing… right up until the end… and maybe I can learn how to use Twitter from beyond the grave so I can keep my writing alive and my future ghost-tweets can make you all horrified enough to be compelled to buy my books. They say my books are funny, even the nudist parts, and maybe I can make more Tom Hiddleston jokes to keep that part of my Twitter following happy too.

If you are foolish enough to look for me on Twitter, you can find me at @mbeyer51.

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June 22, 2019 · 3:39 pm

Revision and Rewrite…

The cartoonist making Paffooney-stuff.

I have a confession. I am not faring well enough to continue putting out a page of Hidden Kingdom every Saturday. I know that may sadden one or two obsessive-compulsive fans of Prince Flute psychologically torturing his adventure-mates. But there it is. Arthritis and lack of funds slow me down.

I am not saying I am giving up trying to finish the graphic novel and publish it in some form before I croak (and I don’t mean in the way a bullfrog does it), but the schedule has to accommodate even more physical challenges.

I have to spend more time driving for Uber in return for slave wages and unfair criticisms from dyspeptic passengers.

My drawing hand is letting me down with weather-related stiffness and muscle spasms.

And there are other projects that have to get some priority too.

I am re-reading Recipes for Gingerbread Children, marking up my personal copy for changes I need to make, so that I can re-publish it in better form before I try to seriously promote the hell out of it (too much Hell in anything is not a good idea, so I have to get some of it out).

I am also nearing the end of finishing When the Captain Came Calling. Soon I must think about publishing that book as well. It is turning out better than I thought it was going to be.

And I know that means leaving the poor Rascal naked in the middle of the story, but you never know, he might enjoy becoming a nudist.

I will get back to cartoon page-making as soon as possible. But for now, we are on hold.

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June 21, 2019 · 4:18 pm

Chewing on Gingerbread Stories

I have started re-reading my werewolf stories again as I intend to promote the heck out of the two books pictured here in the rest of 2019.

Both books are intertwined even though they are both stand-alone novels with different genre ties and different themes. They share the same characters, many of the same scenes (though seen from different viewpoints in each novel), many of the same plot points, and the same werewolf. I like to think that reading both books together makes a better, more nuanced story as a two-book whole. But each book is also a whole in itself. And you can read them in either order.

I started by re-reading Recipes for Gingerbread Children. This book is basically a fairy-tale story-collection contrasted with a Holocaust survivor’s story. It is about how a storyteller manages to shape the world around her to help herself and others make sense out of a cruel world filled with evil and betrayal.

Dunderella and the Wolf Girl (a random werewolf illustration not connected to either book)

The Baby Werewolf is a Gothic horror tale where the real monster is hidden by deeply buried secrets, and lies have to be pierced to protect the innocent. I will re-read and promote this book second. I love both of these books with a paternal sort of overlooking-the-warts-and-birth-defects love.

So, I have a plan. A hopelessly pie-in-the-sky plan. But a plan. And hopefully at least some part of the plan will work.

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May 24, 2019 · 3:18 pm

My Latest Book

I received the first copy of my book Fools and Their Toys.

It is the story of an autistic man with hidden talent for ventriloquism, an irrepressible ventriloquist’s puppet. a zebra. with a habit of insulting the right people at the wrong time, and a lurking serial killer who targets young boys for sexual torture and death.

It is in many ways a continuation of the story in Sing Sad Songs.

My ten good books, and the one bad one that is now out of print.

I have so many books published now that it is rather hard to photograph them all together in one picture. Of course, this fool feels compelled to put some of his toys in the picture.

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May 6, 2019 · 3:14 pm

Fools and Their Toys

It is now published!!! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RKRYWH1/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=michael+beyer+books&qid=1557153283&s=gateway&sr=8-3

These are the links. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1096891867/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_2?keywords=michael+beyer+books+Fools+and+Their+Toys&qid=1557153522&s=gateway&sr=8-2-fkmrnull

And here is a peek into Chapter One;

Canto One – The Puppet’s Preface

Murray Dawes was sad but silent as the sheriff’s deputies put him in the cell in the county lock-up.  Other men would protest their innocence of being a serial murderer and sex offender.  Murray was accused of being the infamous “Teddy Bear Killer” who molested and murdered young boys all across the Midwest.  Murray was in fact not quite right in the head.  Something was off enough to make him constantly silent as the stones on an Iowan hillside in winter.  But just because he was silent and mentally unique, it didn’t explain how he could end up accused of terrible crimes when he was totally innocent.  He had, in truth, only been guilty of rescuing the last boy-victim of the real killer.  And because he wouldn’t answer any questions from anybody, and the boy-victim was in shock and couldn’t talk, he stood a very real chance of taking the whole of the blame.  Well, I wasn’t about to stand for it.  I would find some way to tell them all the truth.  My name is Zearlop.  I am Murray’s ventriloquist’s puppet.  And I know the truth that’s inside his muddled head.

I also know you will probably say this is totally unbelievable, that an inanimate object… or, rather, a puppet who is animated by others, cannot be the narrator of a story.  You are right, of course.  I can’t possibly be the author of this tale.  I am a modified sock puppet of a zebra with mechanically blinking eyes and mechanically enhanced mouth movements.  My head is full of cotton stuffing and old newspapers.  But I was cleverly put together by two geniuses, and given life by another.

You have to understand; the human mind is like a great complex Labyrinth where no man has ever mastered every single corridor.  Sometimes the most beautifully complex minds become lost or trapped in a dead-end corridor, never to find the light outside again.

But sometimes a special mind that was meant for special things is helped to find the light again… shown a trap door or a secret exit by another who has mastered at least a portion of the great, overly-complex dungeon.

And sometimes it is possible to slip past the Minotaur who guards the secrets of the Labyrinth and keeps us all from unlocking the magic. My story, the story I mean to tell you even if you don’t believe I am capable of telling it because I am a mechanical sock puppet of a zebra, begins with a fool.  The fool’s name is Murray Dawes.  That’s right, Mumbling Murray Dawes, the feeb, the spaz, the Special-Ed idiot, son of Elmer and Ethel Dawes, the nephew of Harker Dawes, and the only human being in the universe who had more in common with potatoes than he did with other people.  Yes, I promise I will explain that last one later in the story.

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April 19, 2019 · 3:31 pm

…In Place of Earning Royalties

Some writers make tons of money for sharing their made-up fantasy worlds. Steven King, JK Rowlings, and James Patterson have made it to the limelight where few authors ever stand. Some of us get by on smaller rewards.

Me, I intend to give myself some grins by sending a copy of my book Snow Babies to a girl who was in my class in grade school, and I may have had a huge crush on her at some point in that past. And because of me being a lazy writer, this post consists mostly of the letter I am sending with the book.

Dear Valerie,

Remember me?  I have lived more of my life in Texas now than I did in Iowa, but my heart is still living in Iowa.  The part of me that turns into fiction books has always been an Iowan.  You are probably wondering why I am sending you a copy of this book.  Well, to be honest, I owe it to you.  You are the person out of everyone I have ever known that the main character is named after.  This is not a best seller and may never make much money.  But this copy represents the share of this book that I owe to you.

If you are worried that I am writing stories about you, don’t be.  The character of Valerie Clarke is based on a student that I taught for two school years.  She did remind me of you in some minor ways.  But the girl in this book is really based on the story of Sofia’s girlhood as I came to know about it.  I would like to tell you a little bit about her.

Sofie was, just like the character in the book, short a parent.  It was a struggle for her to be the cheerful, aggressively positive girl that she was.  She was in my largest class of seventh graders when she was 13, a rather rowdy group of mostly Hispanic kids.  She loved almost every story we read in class.  She enjoyed every group activity and task we did in class, often leading the group she was in, and even sometimes disciplining misbehavior that I hadn’t called the student out for, simply because she felt they should be appreciating my class more.

By the time she was an eighth grader, she had developed a large crush on me.  The year before I married my wife, she actually asked me to wait for her to grow up and marry her instead.  It wasn’t the kind of love that gets a teacher fired and put in prison.  Really, she was looking at me as the father-figure she needed in her life.  Telling you that fact reveals which character in the story actually most resembles me, if you decide you actually want to read this book.

The book is a comedy about a blizzard.  But like any good comedy, it will try to make you love characters enough that parts of it will make you cry as much it makes you laugh.  It is a book I submitted to the 2014 YA Novel contest called the Rosetti Award Competition from Chaunticleer Reviews.  It didn’t win, but it was a finalist. So there is some reason to believe it is not a bad book.

Of all the people I feel compelled to share this book with, your name is at the top of the list.  Partly because I borrowed your name to write it with.  But also, because of the fact that Valerie in the book, and in other books I have written about her, is often known as, “The most beautiful girl ever born in Norwall (Rowan), Iowa.” It was something the boys in the Rowan school said about you in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades.  I don’t know if I am telling you something you didn’t already know or not, but it explains your connection to this story.  And why I felt the need to give you a copy of this book.

Read it if you want.  Share it, if you want.  Use it to put a voodoo curse on me if that’s what you want.  But I hope you enjoy it and understand that you do have some part in the fact that it now exists. 

With heartfelt gratitude,

Michael

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April 4, 2019 · 4:14 pm

Promos with Paffoonies

A Paffooney used in the act of promoting Snow Babies this week.

This week, April 1st through 5th, I created a promotion in which my novel Snow Babies is available for free in e-book format. This is supposed to put the book out there and make people want to read it. I hope I can learn how to use this promotional thingie better than I have for the first time.

I tried to get people to buy it by putting out ads like this, self-created, that had a link to the purchase page on Amazon.

Here’s the link for this post; https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Babies-Michael-Beyer-ebook/dp/B077PMQ4YF/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_2?keywords=michael+beyer+books+snow+babies&qid=1554391562&s=gateway&sr=8-2-fkmrnull

It looks better on Twitter or Facebook than it does here.

I posted it daily on Facebook, Twitter, here on WordPress, and through individual emails and direct messages. So far this week, I have given away four free copies and sold three paperbacks. The paperbacks were bought by me, two of them to give away to specific people, and one that my sister bought before I could send her one. I also intend to send one as a surprise to the girl from my grade school class that the main character on the cover is named after. I am hoping that she and her daughters and granddaughters will read it and love it rather than burn it.

I made a connection over Twitter with Prince Hamdan Mohammed of Saudi Arabia over it, a surprise to me to say the least, though I have no reason to believe that he even accepted the free copy of my book.

But that’s the sum of my promotional results it seems. I may have earned $5 in royalties this week. I may have bargained for one positive review. I have a Saudi Prince for a pen-pal. And my literary work will probably remain in obscurity until long after I am dead, if it even splashes then.

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February 16, 2019 · 9:36 pm

Love Potion Number Nine

I now hold in my hands my author’s copy of Sing Sad Songs, my ninth young adult novel. It is a romantic tragedy filled with love and death, magic, clowns, and angels. It is meant to make you laugh, cry, and fall in love. It is not the first novel in my hometown series, but it is one of the best.

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