I've written seven books that have been published thus far. My most recent book, The God Conclusion, just became available on July 7th. For the first decade of my writing career, the focus has been on putting more books on my virtual bookshelf instead of promoting my work, operating on the theory that people will look at a single book and think, "well, anybody can write a book." But how many people can write and publish six books? The answer to that question alone should limit my competition. Marketing was mostly limited to announcing a new book to my friends on social media in the hopes of selling a few copies. I sold a few books and wrote books that won a few awards while biding my time and waiting for the perfect moment to take the literary world by storm. I've decided that moment has come with the publication of this latest book. We've shifted our thinking from "future" to "current", which means actively trying to sell books. And now that I've decided to market my work to the general public, I see a potential flaw in my plan--I haven't got the slightest clue about what it takes to sell a book, so I'm going to have to wing it. On the other hand, advertising means spending money, and I'm reticent to spend money when I don't know what I'm doing, so I decided I needed help. Therefore, I hired a marketing consultant. My consultant says we're in that phase of the marketing campaign for The God Conclusion where we're still trying to increase awareness through social media. We want to generate positive connections with potential readers as we work to persuade people to … [Read more...]
A negative book review
The God Conclusion is my seventh published book. In my own horribly biased opinion, it's the best I've written, and that's not completely meaningless boasting, given that three of the previous six books won gold medals in their respective categories from Reader's Favorite. The book is doing okay on sales (at the moment #50 on Amazon's Top 100 books in Religious Studies -- Science and Religion, but I think that changes by the hour) but what I really need is book reviews so future potential readers have an unbiased opinion (that would be yours) on which to base their decision to buy my book. So far, I only have two reviews on Amazon. The first review is a four-star review, which is good, but I'm reasonably convinced the person who wrote the review didn't read the book, unless she's an incredible speed reader. She downloaded the book one day and published her review the next. Although Amazon claims the book is over 550 pages long, the print copy is actually 322 pages, translating to a little over 90,000 words. It's theoretically possible she read the entire book, but not very likely. The content of that review is basically a generic description of the book. The reviewer says my argument is from the perspective of a dualist view derived from Judea-Christianity, which isn't true at all: I defend Judaism and Christianity against the attacks Dawkins made against them in his book. Then I attack the best arguments for atheism using logic and scientific evidence. It's not impossible to think that this person really did read the book; however, given the fact she came … [Read more...]
Honest book reviews
From almost every measurable point of view, my new Facebook advertising campaign is a smashing success. In just a couple of months, we've reached well over 100,000 people and gained more than 4,000 new friends who like the Facebook page. According to the advertising consultant I've hired, we are absolutely killing it on the cost per click at only about 3 cents per click. In fact, the only measurable input that isn't absolutely breaking records is actual book sales. While The God Conclusion recently cracked the Amazon Top 100 books in the Religious Studies -- Science and Religion category, sales continue to lag well behind the trajectory of the advertising campaign. If only ten percent of the people who like the Facebook page bought the book, I'd have more than twice as many sales as I currently do. It's only been on sale for two weeks, but I'm not ever going to be able to retire on these numbers. I'm only kidding about retirement--I intend to keep writing until I die--but writers do like to be rewarded for the fruit of their labors with book sales. Thus far, I've had one published book review through a campaign I ran at a company called Book Sprout, and I expect another review to go live at any moment because the person who left the review told me how he rated my book. Frankly, I'll soon have two published reviews, and neither of them will give the potential reader an accurate portrayal of what my book is about. In the case of the Book Sprout review, that reviewer rated the book four stars, which is good. However, the reviewer in question downloaded the book on … [Read more...]
President Chance the Gardener
[Yet another rejected piece for American Thinker. There is one editor there who seems to hate everything I write. Luck of the draw, I guess. Or...dare I say it? This one might not be as good as my other work. I'll let you decide, except I've added a few lines in this piece to juice it up. See Dr. Strangelove for more details.] In 1980 when I was only twenty years old, I saw Being There for the first time and thought I was watching one of the most brilliant satires ever conceived. Peter Sellers starred in the film as Chance the Gardener, a barely functional illiterate with a talent for pruning roses and not much else. Chance learns everything he knows by watching television, which meant he knows practically nothing. The film begins with Chance living at the estate of a wealthy benefactor who dies and leaves Chance homeless. Suddenly thrust into the real world for the first time, Chance wanders the streets of the Capitol and finds himself reduced to begging complete strangers to feed him but then a minor accident dramatically changes his fortune. A limousine chauffeuring around the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington accidentally backs into Chance (who was distracted by watching himself on television) injuring his knee and the next thing we know, Chance is living in the home of an even wealthier benefactor, Ben Rand (played by Melvyn Douglas), and through Rand, gains access to the very highest levels of government. Even his name was the result of a miscommunication: when Chance identifies himself as “Chance the gardener”, Eve Rand (Shirley … [Read more...]
The God Conclusion officially available July 7th
Sorry if you've seen this announcement once before, but when I changed name servers at the host of my website, I lost the content of a couple of previous posts, and this was one of them. The God Conclusion will be officially made available for sale on July 7th, although the book can be preordered currently through Amazon. The back cover reads: "A POWERFUL RESPONSE TO RICHARD DAWKINS In his sensational international bestseller, The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins attempts to demonstrate the supreme improbability of the existence of a supreme being by using arguments based in science and almost succeeds. Almost. Now in his book The God Conclusion, author John L. Leonard takes a closer look at the same scientific evidence but adds a logical perspective to reach a surprisingly different result -- the probability that some sort of supreme being exists is extremely likely, a claim well-supported by scientific evidence. After going through The God Delusion chapter by chapter and point by point to rebut the arguments of Dawkins, Leonard presents his own unique interpretation of what the scientific evidence really tells us and challenges all of us to examine our beliefs, no matter what beliefs we may currently hold." Even if you don't like Richard Dawkins or care about his arguments against religion, you'll want to see the evidence to which I refer before dismissing it. The book is obviously available for Kindle, but every other format, including print, will be available on July 7th. Below you can watch the first "book blurb" trailer. … [Read more...]
