The bio of Bob I wrote, "Bronze Inside and Out", is very expensive because it is Canadian Academic (University of Calgary), but I make no money on any books. I once made a bit of money writing tourist squibs for free advertising mags. Advertising is where the money is.
Apart for writing as part of other jobs, this is the sequence that has developed.
1. I made small books during the craze for Haiku-length fiction. 1/4 size of typing paper. Very tricky to print on the computer so they came out double-sided booklets. There's probably a program now. Printed photo taken with a digital cam to create a cover. "Bound" by folding computer paper and sewing in the "gutter" with yarn which I finished by making tassels. Sold for Christmas stocking stuffers.
2. I like to work in full-sheet, two column, 12 point print because it's easier to read, esp. for older folks. I bought a binding machine and made a lot of copies before the machine broke. Sold books through local stores, not necessarily bookstores. Many of the Blackfeet books were in this form.
"12 Blackfeet Stories" is in this category. I was already working on the time-lines and was reacting to all the people who only have a mental picture of Indians on horseback chasing bison. About that time a book came out that divided the history into the US into generations and gave each one a theme. I decided to do that for Blackfeet and make each story a typical event in that twenty-year period. Some of them are based on real people or events. Twenty years went by so I wrote a 13th story. This small book is especially useful for high school history classes who need a sense of how the tribe has changed over the years.
3. Lulu.com came on the scene. It is a website that does printing but not publishing. Once you have the object, it's up to you to market. They are a little expensive, but good quality. Responding to their authors, they began to list sub-contractors who would do the other work of publishing: illustrations, graphs, indexing, line-editing for spelling and grammar, reviews and publicity. Books can be sold many ways in many places. The main problem is NOT that people are prejudiced but that a lot of people just don't have money for books. Sell to libraries and schools instead. Maybe churches, museums and NGO's. Associate them with high quality gifts for graduation or marriage. Some of my books came into the family that way a hundred years ago, like Bibles. They were not like today's discardable throwaways.
4. Books published meant getting an agent and an acquiring editor at a publisher. The big ones only want sensational stuff: politics, sex, and famous people. These are who Sherman Alexie goes for and can get because of his name recognition and surprise genres -- whatever is selling.
There are many small publishing houses. Their biggest advantage is distribution, as they know who will put their books on shelves and sell them. Their biggest disadvantage us "discovery" -- people finding out about them. The google/website/amazon loop works pretty well.
Reviews are problematic because everyone wants to be a famous author but not a famous reviewer. Still, it's a good start, not least because it teaches a person what's out there and gets one's name known, to say nothing of IOU's from other writers to review one's own books.
It's easy to become a publisher. No need for a warehouse fulll of books since one can print in small batches or "on demand," which means not until someone asks to buy it. If the book is sold as a PDF online, an ebook, there is no need to even buy paper or wait for a printing machine.
5. Books can be as luxurious and unique as you want to make them. Hand-binding books is a very old and elegant tradition, esp for chapbooks like small devotions, poetry, or sayings. Book bindings have been beaded. Many are imprinted with gold leaf. A secondary art is marbling the "end papers" that are glued on the inside of the binding. Books have been bound in human skin. Or homemade paper. The paper might have inclusions like pressed flowers or even insects.
6. Electronic printing leaves the "book" in the sense of paper bound between something more durable, the "codex" form that succeeded scrolls of parchment. I have gone to blogging which means the writing is episodic, one subject per post, and full of links to other blogs. "BLOG" means a log of reading on the computer. Academic or other research that demands to know where ideas and print came from mean that links are necessary and valuable. I use headings, page numbers and word counts on my active typing to keep order. Posts on different days may continue on the same subject or be tied together only by using the labels the program offers.
This method means that writing on the same theme can be grouped into a potential book or rewritten as a manuscript to be reposted on a long form blog, which is more like an essay or an academic paper.
Blogging allows the inclusion of photos and graphs but one must be careful about copyright. People can get very angry and sue. Copyright law is very tangled right now because it is nationally defined and the internet crosses all borders. I do not copyright material but I would like to have it identified as to source.
7. I've converted some books to blogs by posting them with each chapter being in order as posts. Here are two:
heartbreakbutte.blogspot.com
prairiemaryblog.wordpress.com
This is a collection of short stories over a period of time.
Blackfeetreservationreader.blogspot.com
Browningnewspaper.blogspot.com
Scriverart.blogspot.com
Eastfrontirrigation.blogspot.com
Good resource for people studying water management
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