Why do many readers purchase a particular book? Consider the following:

• Many book readers could become interested in it
• Those readers are often reminded of the book
• Benefits of reading it are clear and convincing
• Readers find if easy to purchase

With all four of the above, your book will sell well. If the potential audience is in the millions, it will sell at least in the hundreds of thousands. But beware of the following simplistic Amazon-review dream: A few good reviews will generate more sales which will cause more good reviews which will generate more sales, until hundreds of thousands are sold on Amazon. I suggest that rarely happens, if ever.

An associate of mine published a short book two months ago. The audience is small but the book was apparently well prepared and loved by those who read it; the illustrations were highly praised. It sold well for the first few weeks. It now has twenty Amazon reviews, each of them giving five-stars. Yet the Amazon Best Sellers Rank is now at #327,966. I suspect that the bulls-eye of the target audience mostly already owns copies of the book and that most of the secondary target has no idea the book exists.

The point? Those twenty 5-star Amazon reviews will not likely sell many more books in the next few weeks, unless other marketing avenues are used to bring the book to the attention of the secondary audience.

We need to concentrate on the four basics of successful book sales and beware of simplistic ideas about quick results.

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The Miracle of Father Kapaun

Whether it’s by a medic or chaplain or regular soldier, a wounded comrade is carried in somebody’s arms. The word “literally” can distract from that simple act, tempting the reader to wonder, for a moment, how a wounded soldier could be non-literally carried. I know this is trivial in itself, but it gives us a clue that the writer is probably not professional, and imperfections can add up over the course of 200 pages.

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But first, consider the virtue of doubting the worst we hear about another person, holding back negative judgment, at least until we hear from the defense. We need to be objective, especially when somebody’s character is being attacked.

An hour before the first Japanese planes were launched from the decks of aircraft carriers, many miles from the nearest coast of Hawaii, nobody knew how devastating the attack would be. Prior reports indicated that the military forces at Pearl Harbor were not generally on high alert, but nobody could be certain, when that launching commenced, that the Americans would be completely taken by surprise.

Not even the Japanese who trained for that military mission could be sure it would be successful. Everything depended on surprise. Why do we now understand the devastation of that December 7th attack? Hindsight. We can see the photo of giant plume of water shot up from the explosion of a torpedo on the hull of a ship. We can read of the thousands of American lives lost and the many airplanes and ships damaged or destroyed. We can hear the words of those who survived that devastation.

But hindsight should not blind us to the ignorance that everybody lived in right before that attack began. Everybody was ignorant of the devastating attack, one hour before the first planes took off from those carriers.

Japanese losses were comparatively light, with only 29 aircraft lost, compared with 188 American planes destroyed, most of which were sitting on the ground. But things could have gone differently. The weather was getting rough after the second wave of attacks, instead of earlier. Somebody might have alerted the Americans in time for some of those 188 planes to have gotten into the air.  The American carriers could have been close enough to have launched an attack on the Japanese carriers. Even some of the ground aircraft might have threatened the Japanese fleet, if the advantage of surprise had been lost.

The point? Even the Japanese did not know for sure that their attack would be devastating, an hour before their planes were launched. So why believe that the president of the United States knew about that devastation, before the attack, when those men on those Japanese ships knew nothing for sure? Franklin D. Roosevelt had no idea that a devastating attack was about to take place.

Of course there’s much more that we can learn from various researchers. But let’s not get carried away with believing President Roosevelt had any sure pre-knowledge of anything related to the Pearl Harbor attack, even if he had access to many bits of evidence. Remember that when we look back at the evidences that the president may have had from advisors, we today have the advantage of looking back at a historic event; he did not.

As an aside, when I was a young man, I worked with a Charlie White, as we maintained the sprinkler systems on the campus of California State University Long Beach. He told me what he experienced during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Charlie was on a small destroyer; as I recall, they were on training out at sea. When they were attacked by a Japanese plane, they replied with live return fire. The pilot gave up the attack and looked for an easier target, or at least a safer target.

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Nazi Germany Versus 21st Century America Regarding 9-11

How do our present freedoms in the USA compare with the freedoms of citizens of Germany during the rule of Adolf Hitler?

Let’s examine the technical quality in one brief excerpt, remembering that the quality of ideas, the noble life, the Christ-like example—those can compensate for imperfect English with ease. What follows, I hope, will not distract from the deeper value of this book. For the moment, I merely encourage improvement in writing quality in one detail.

Quality Writing

Consider the following sentence, keeping in mind the context: an army chaplain who assisted wounded soldiers during the Korean War. What do you think of it?

He literally carried a wounded soldier on a long, torturous forced march to the prison camp.

I don’t imply that any basic rule of English has been violated: I see nothing wrong in punctuation or spelling. By the way, if you thought that “torturous” was the wrong word, I disagree, for the soldier was probably suffering pain relevant to a word like “torture.” The problem is subtle.

Whether it’s by a medic or chaplain or regular soldier, a wounded comrade is carried in somebody’s arms. The word “literally” can distract from that simple act, tempting the reader to wonder, for a moment, how a wounded soldier could be non-literally carried. I know this is trivial in itself, but it gives us a clue that the writer is probably not professional, and imperfections can add up over the course of 200 pages.

The point? Avoid any adjective or adverb (or any other word) that will distract from what we want to portray.

A Distracting Metaphor

Accidentally distracting the reader need not come from one word. A poorly thought out metaphor can be distracting, as in the following example of my own making, keeping to the same subject:

Using the word “literally” in the above sentence is not in itself disastrous, not like tripping while carrying a wounded soldier and dropping the man onto the ground.

Notice how the above metaphor does the opposite of what is intended? We imagine the fall and the poor injured soldier hitting the ground—a serious accident—but the point was intended to be that something is not disastrous. Beware of putting “not” in front of a metaphor.

The Miracle of Father Kapaun

While writing this post, two or more copies of The Miracle of Father Kapaun may have been sold on Amazon, for it’s now ranked #574. The quality of English is not a strain on sales of this book, or many other books I suppose, when the interest and value is great.

Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero

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Customer: Thank you.

Waiter: May I ask, did you bring reading glasses?

Customer: Why? Is there a problem?

Waiter: Maybe or maybe not. With reading glasses, you can see better and easily remove the fly from the soup, but if you left your reading glasses at home, there’s no problem.

I submit one I just invented. The three parts are separated to allow you to guess in stages, with the third part the easiest for guessing (the three parts make up the same riddle). Traditional ones are interspersed. I’ll give a hint for my own riddle: It’s not nearly as dark as it first appears.

With a Coldness (part one) by Jonathan Whitcomb

With a coldness kills a walker
With a rock it makes a blocker
With a hole it hides a stalker

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Used in The Hobbit

Voiceless it cries
Wingless flutters
Toothless bites
Mouthless mutters

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With a Coldness (part two)

With a foot that never walks
It never eats; it never talks
But may look down on soaring hawks

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Old Riddle put to rhyme by J.W.

Feed me, I grow
Touch me, I bite
Always I glow
Water’s my fright

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With a Coldness (part three)

Bravest men can die on whim
Rivers run away from him
Gawkers gaze from highest rim

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Will you be surprised?

Answers

The Hobbit riddle: the wind

Another old riddle I put to rhyme: fire

“With a Coldness:” a mountain

Hoax from Canada

“Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” has now had over forty million (40,000,000+) viewers who watched an apparent toddler being carried up into the air, for a short distance, by an apparent bird of prey. An animation studio in Montreal, Quebec, soon admitted that it was a computer-generated imitation of reality: There was no real toddler and no real bird.

Exposure of the Hoax-Video (31 views by the middle of December 28, 2012)

A humorous look at why “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” is a hoax.

I was about half through my creation of the expose-video when I learned that Centre NaD, an animation school in Quebec, had made public the true nature of their video. By the time I had completed my own project and uploaded it to Youtube, on Christmas Eve, many expose-videos had already appeared, some of them with many thousands of viewers.

In reality a woman was acting a part, not reacting to a real attack

Attitude of Gratitude

Today, for a minute, I started to slip into the quagmire of self pity, for my hours of work in trying to make an entertaining video (that reveals the truth) was overshadowed, by a million to one, by a work of deception. The student animators in Canada may have spent fifty times as many hours on their video than I had on mine, but how many Youtube viewers were deceived by their product!

There may be, at this time, many thousands of parents and grandparents around the world who are nervous about taking small children to city parks. They were among those forty million viewers, but did not catch the later revelation that it was an admitted hoax. I’m glad that my own videos and books do not cause such an unnecessary problem.

I now realize the short-sighted and narrow perspective in my self pity. Truth will prevail, in time; and I have already had my own Youtube-popularity success with “Ropen-Pterodactyl American Eyewitness.” That video, that I edited and uploaded, has had over 300,000 viewers.

We need to remember to be grateful for what truth we have and what means we have to promulgate it. The future victory of truth is assured, regardless of how popular or unpopular it may be among some people at present.

Frigate Birds and Freak-Like Nerds

The Frigate bird, also called “man-o’-war bird,” flies far from the conflicting opinions of the living-pterosaur controversy. How irrelevant! But again it has been brought up as if evidence for the nonexistence of the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

What is the true meaning of Christmas? Living in accordance with the gift of eternal life given to us by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It is in forgiving and being forgiven, improving, in giving, and learning and loving, and in hoping that many others will enjoy all the blessings that we have received.

The full light of His coming into the world lives in his resurrection, after suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and giving his life for us on the cross. Consider the following lines from “Through my Savior:”

Now in the morning of shadow waning,
Like when the light of morning filled a tomb,
Grant us forgiveness: both giving, gaining;
Fill us with light: Dispel avenging gloom.
Once in a garden the blood was dropping;
Once on a cross the voice of mercy said:
“Oh my Father, forgive my brother;
I forgive him with the blood I shed.”

The Light of the World

Only a few days [earlier], a boy from Erin’s class at school had died in a car accident. She had seen a lot of people crying at the funeral, and she had cried a lot herself. She hadn’t known the boy that well, but Erin knew his family loved him as much as her family loved her. She felt scared to know that something like that could happen to someone her age. . . .

The story ended, and a recording of the prophet’s voice came over the loudspeaker. He bore his testimony and read a scripture from the Bible: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). . . .

The scripture said that everyone would die—young people, old people—everyone. Erin knew that, of course, but she hadn’t thought about it much before. She thought she was too young to think about such things. But she wasn’t too young to have a testimony of the truth: because of Jesus Christ, everyone would live again.

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet,

Eating of curds and whey;

There came a great spider,

And sat down beside her,

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn;

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.

Where’s the little boy that looks after the sheep?

He’s under the haystack, fast asleep.

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Reading to Children

When a pre-schooler sits on the lap of a parent and hears an interesting story for children, that child notices that the parent is reading. The child may not understand anything about how letters form words and words form stories, but there’s no doubt about a connection.

Child Care Resources in California

For short-term child care help, babysitting may be preferred, in some cases; but the average hourly rate for family child care is much lower than that of a truly professional babysitter.

For those of us who speak English, is there any commonplace idea that we prefer not to be labeled with a word? The natural direction of growth for the English language is to add a word to our vocabulary when we find something new that we value. How unnatural to officially dilute a word, so that it refers to additional things, not originally intended!

Think about the possibility that a politician or judge or group of persons might change the meaning of a word in the English language. How often has an English word been officially changed through legal means? Not often.

What about the relationship of husband-wife? Why make the word “marriage” more vague? Why try to force on society the opposite of the naturnal evolution of language? Progress naturally involves adding words and phrases, as new objects and ideas emerge. Forcing a word to be more vague is fighting against progress, the opposite of nature, the opposite of progress in language evolution. Does the husband-wife relationship no longer have any value? Is it really not worth having a word specific to it?

The Value of True Marriage

For those who feel that this relationship between a man and a woman, the husband-wife relationship, is of great value to society—those persons should have no difficulty understanding how important is this concept: The husband-wife relationship deserves to have a name specific to itself.

In Addition

For those tempted to ridicule any of the above, beware of bulverism, that counterfeit of sound reasoning, that sneak thief who hides his crowbar under the business suit he wears only to deceive you. Look not for one point of weakness in somebody’s reasoning, and then dismiss everything that person says as if an imperfect person cannot have anything worthy to say, for the sneak thief will already have his crowbar at the dead bolt of the door to sound reasoning. Bulverism breaks through to steal truth when we are distracted.

For those looking for an excuse to label me a “gay hater,” as if I were against persons who label themselves “gay,” what about my poem that refers to same-gender attraction in the following lines?

“The lonely oak, against the storm, unmoved, Now bending away from the sea, Will someday rest, at home across that depth.”

A person who has long-term same-gender attraction but who avoids the sin of same-gender sexual activity is “the lonely oak.” What is the future rest awaiting that person? ”At home across that depth” refers to heaven.

I do not hate anybody. I love people and I love the truth, especially when it gives us permanent joy and dispels the dark shadows that would otherwise cross the path of life’s journey. If I feared “gay” persons, I would not write a poem that included a reference to such a person going to heaven.

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Traditional Marriage T-shirts

In God we trust – to preserve marriage between a man and a woman

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North Carolina a Political Headache for Democrats

Official Proponents Appeal Prop 8 Decision to Entire 9th Circuit

Another Vote for Marriage

Why I Fight to Uphold Traditional Marriage in Washington

Obama and the Truth About Marriage

I don’t mean to imply that Steinbeck’s adherence to the general rule is my model for writing. If it were, I would have learned little from the first chapter of Writing Tools. But that rule I now hold in high esteem: Keep subject and verb near the beginning, most of the time.

With all the virtue in that ideal (making sentences more clear), I still am entranced by Melville’s opening in Moby Dick. If I recall correctly, the second sentence begins with, “Some years ago, having little money in my purse, and nothing to interest me onshore . . .” How I love that form of sentence! Beginning to read such a novel, I can snuggle the small of my back into the pillow on my couch and put up my feet, before the story action calls away my attention. It gives me time to enjoy the anticipation.

With all that said, if I recall correctly, the first sentence in Moby Dick is, “Call me Ishmael,” a perfect preface for a long periodic sentence. The key is in the balance from sentence to sentence.

Call me impatient, but with little time for long novels and almost no interest in details involving whaling ships and their sailors and captains, I don’t think I ever finished reading Moby Dick. But I began my second reading of Writing Tools immediately after my first reading of it. If you are a less-experienced writer than me, your journey of discovery in Clark’s book will be worth what little money you have in your purse.

And remember, keep subjects and verbs near the beginnings of your sentences . . . most of the time.