Article for North Star

For almost 15 years I've been a contributor, and sometimes a regular columnist, to the North Star, the quarterly magazine of the North Country Trail Association. This is all for free, just because I love the trail, but it does look good on a resume.

My blog post "Why Stealth Camping is Not a Good Idea" needs to be expanded a bit, and then it will appear as an article in the Fall issue of North Star.

If you have any interest in this, click the "Published Works" tab, and you can see a listing of the articles that have appeared in North Star since 1998.

Product Review at Shared Reviews

I've really fallen off in my participation at Shared Reviews. Nevertheless, I worked my way back up to third place (heavily weighted to favor those with new content). I've been dragging my feet because they are working on a makeover for the mechanics of the site, and until that is complete there are no higher levels for me to attain. (It looks like there are, but the architecture to support them isn't in place.) That affects my motivation.

Even so, I got my act together and wrote a new product review this morning for Purina Active Senior 7+ Dog Chow.

And I see that addition has moved me into second! Things are looking up.

Shared Reviews

Submitted "Memory of Life"

I just submitted a new poem to the Ludington Public Poetry Project. It's a small program that posts poems by local authors around town for people to read. The theme this time is Spring and Summer. It begins:

Memory of Life

I watch the thirteen-lined ground squirrel
stand on her hind legs and sniff the air.

I think it's pretty good, but there are some very good local poets, so who knows. No monetary rewards involved, but publicity and name recognition are always helpful.

Submitted "Now Then When"

The Elements of Life anthology (from Twin Trinity Media) is essentially complete, but the editor, Michelle Devon, called for a few extra poetry submissions from authors who have other accepted works in the series.

My first accepted story will actually be in the next book to come out from the series, Elements of Love. Nevertheless, that qualified me to submit. I sent off "Now Then When," and hope to hear if its accepted fairly soon, since the book is laid out enough that Michy knows she needs some poems to fill out the pages.

I'm really hopeful, because I have stories and/or poems accepted for all the subsequent books in the series which have been planned to date. This would also put a work of mine in one sooner.

Succintly Yours- Flash Fiction

I've never done this before, but decided to play this once at least. Using this picture as a prompt, write a story of fewer than 140 words OR 140 characters. I chose 140 characters. Extra "credit" if you include the word "tempt."



Here's my story:

“Don’t tempt me, Joe.”
“Stop muttering while I set this monopod.”
“I warned you... one more morning chasing birds...”
“See it? A blue-footed booby!”
“Goodbye, Joe.”

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The prompt came from Grandma's Goulash

Amazon Smacks the Small Sellers- What Else is New?

I just got a notice from Amazon:

If we determine that there is insufficient customer demand for your product, we may choose to no longer carry it. In such cases, we will attempt to return all Products to you.

Please be sure to update your return address so that we can properly process returns to your organization. This address should be a valid US street address rather than a PO Box. You can update your address by going to Settings->Return Address. If we have an outdated or incorrect address for you, or if we cannot charge to your freight account, we may liquidate the Products and keep the proceeds, destroy the Products, or ship the Products to you and deduct the charges from any payments due to you through Advantage.

We apologize for any inconvenience but at this time we cannot provide you with any item level return information prior to the return being processed.

So what they are saying is that if not enough of your books sell through Amazon that they may or may not return any to you that they have, and they aren't going to tell you how few sales is too few. In other words, they can just cut you off without any warning.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Amazon is terrible for small-volume sales. A publisher barely covers the cost of the book by the time all the discounts and fees are applied. Now, in addition to preventing you from making any money, they may even prevent you from presenting your book to the public at large through a company which at least provides credibility.

I wonder if my sales will be enough to keep me in Amazon. I sell about four a year there, and they only keep one in stock.

If you are a small seller, just be sure that your return address in your Advantage Central file is up to date!

Articles at Shared Reviews

I moved one more article today to Shared Reviews from AC, and also finished writing and posting one brand new article.

Ever since the most recent changes to Shared Reviews, until April, I was in the number one spot. But I let things slip during that month. Since the rankings are heavily weighted toward adding content I fell way down because I didn't write more than a couple of items.

But now I'm back up to third! Today I added When My Mnemonic Device Failed Me, and Tips for Using All My Books Home Library Software, a follow-up to my review of the software.

Shared Reviews