Blog Two- The Work of Being an Author

Good morning, it’s a beautiful but frigid day in western New York. My second cup of coffee is steaming on the coaster, and my desk is too cluttered for my taste. That brings me to the point of this blog: what an author does other than put themselves in front of their computer and let their mind go where it may.

The past three months have been busy ones, as I've been marketing my latest book, The Image Maker: Three Men Follow Their Dreams in the Pennsylvania Oil Fields, published in late June 2025. This book is about the mid-19th-century history of western Pennsylvania, but it also relates to the start of the petroleum industry and to jump-starting the Industrial Revolution. To further define my work for this book, I am marketing it because the publisher only touts it on its website; everything else is up to me. Where did I get my marketing degree? Of course, YouTube University is the source of all things you scratch your head about. My sadness is that I haven’t been able to continue writing my new novel, tentatively titled Another Door Opens, since May, which is about half completed… waiting for me on my computer's desktop.

The Image Maker is published by Austin Macauley Publishers, London, New York. They were supportive and helped me navigate a steep learning curve in editing and producing the best type of bio and intro. Then I was on my own, naively thinking that the book would take off like a rocket on its merits alone. You all know the answer to that one.

It is automatically sold through their portal, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and… by me at conferences and book signings. I did have some guidance from a company called Book Award Pro. I’d submitted my book to several Historical Fiction prize sites, but they, for a fee, submitted it and followed up on many more (emphasis on the follow-up part). They also solicited professional reviews of the book, resulting in four 5-star reviews for my advertising and 3 first-place awards and 1 featured award. This did my ego more good than it did sales, but I continue to try everything in my bag of seldom-used, if ever, marketing tools.

That brings me to today. I can’t get sales reports from the publisher until 9 months is up in March. I’m in the dark. I can see the ranking numbers on Amazon, and they look staggeringly awful. I have added three severely edited reviews to the book on Amazon, but they don’t usually do awards unless it is something like the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer.

Here’s what I’ve done so far: called or visited the museums and historical societies in Venango County, where the book takes place. They’ve been nice and bought books to put on their gift shop shelves. I am tentatively on their lecture schedule for the spring. I spoke twice this summer at Chautauqua Institution, home to a highly regarded literary department. I have Barnes and Noble book signings in the early spring in Buffalo and Erie, PA. I am part of a large group of authors who are doing a book signing at a Mall in Buffalo before Christmas. Now comes the interesting part. I answered an email yesterday from a company that sent me the metrics for The Image Maker on Amazon and has a plan to boost sales dramatically by changing which words trigger it to come up when someone is looking for a historical novel to cuddle up with. This is a for-fee service, but I will follow up, as I am unable to further manipulate the site on my end. I’ll share names and info when I know more.

So, what does an author do other than write books? We work hard to make sure they land in the hands of someone who will read them, then pass them along to a friend because they were soooooo good!

Comments, help, questions, your story? Please contact me through this site. Let’s get a dialogue started. Over and Out, Chris