Progress Report

I am grateful to everyone who has purchased a copy of Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch. At this point I am sure most of those purchases have been made by friends, but hope the book might gain some traction with others in time. My marketing budget is tiny, so if you’ve read it and liked it, please recommend it to someone else who might appreciate it.

Barnes and Noble has it available as a NOOK book, but so far the e-version is not available on Amazon. I will check it again in a few days and see if it’s there; if not, I will have to figure it out. bookshop.org, which supports indy book stores, is offering a discount on the purchase price, so please be sure to check there if you want a hard copy.

I’ve been aware of strange pricing options on Amazon, and they’ve hit my book. Amazon itself offers it new for its asking price ($11.99), but if you want you can buy it “used (nearly new)” from a site called “californiabooks” for about $28. What is that about? Do they sell lots of books that way? Does the author/publisher get more money when they do? Any explanations for that phenomenon?

Finally, a friend, whose husband is now receiving palliative care, wrote to me: “Your book has provided much needed moments of wonderful memories as I sit with (him) and makes me want to return at the first opportunity. Well done!”

That may be the most moving “review” Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch will ever receive. I am very grateful.

Vulnerable!

Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch will be available one week from today, May 19. It may be pre-ordered now on Amazon and elsewhere, and some dear friends have told me they’ve placed orders. (Thank you!)

I am very excited and very nervous, as I am sure all authors, particularly first-time-being-published authors, must be.

It would probably help if I were not self-publishing Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch. That would mean that someone else thought it was worth publishing. But anyone can self-publish, and almost anyone has. Though I have asked for, paid for, and received wonderful help along the way, and have received some deeply-appreciated encouragement, the book’s words and photographs are mine alone. The book stops here.

I am excited because I am extremely pleased with how the book looks. I am anxious because I know you can’t judge a book by its cover…and judgment can go every which way.

I am excited because something with my name on it is out there in the world for people to purchase. I am nervous because people are and will be (I trust) spending their hard-earned money to buy a thing for which they have at least modest expectations, which this book may or may not fulfill. And I have always had difficulty dealing with the possibility that I might disappoint others’ expectations of me.

In putting a book on the market, I am asking people to trust me. To trust that they will find it worth their investments of money and of time. To trust they will find it at least interesting if not moving, and that through it they may imagine and even feel something new to their experience. Being human, I hope for a few nice comments/reviews. Being human, I hope I’ve sufficiently steeled myself for those that may not be so nice. Publishing a book makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.

But here’s the deal: this is the book about Ghost Ranch that I want to write and publish. Every word and every photo says, this is Dean Myers’s story of Ghost Ranch. No matter how it fares in the world, it is a story I want to tell, told the way I want to tell it. This certainty makes any sense of being vulnerable worth it.