August | 2017 | Andrew Spradling

Since my last post, shamelessly, with tongue-in-cheek connecting my new novel, The Lost Lantern, with Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle (oops, I did it again), I played around with some numbers. If Jeannette’s sales were created in the 261 weeks it was on the NY Times Bestseller List, the per week amount of books sold is 10,344. If it were over the 12 years since the book’s release the number is 4,326 sold a week. Dan Brown sold 27 million copies of the Da Vinci Code. Over 14 years that’s 37,087 a week. Can you imagine the elation either must have been feeling?

I’ve been at this independent publishing for less than 16 months. I get excited each and every time I sell a book. In one of the above scenarios I probably would stroke out from happiness. But it’s an uphill battle. Even Amazon, which makes most of the money, chooses not to promote independents. The cost-free electronic version? We indies still get bumped by the Pattersons, Sparks, and Grishams. There’s a big ol’ bank of money each month from subscribers at Kindle Unlimited, but writers like me will never see any of it. I believe both my novels are entertaining departures, yet how does one get them in front of the masses?

Still, I’m feeling blessed and extremely grateful. Today marks one month since we released “The Lost Lantern,” and I can’t help but feel optimistic. Without the benefit of a big-budget publisher, pre-publicity, or industry reviews, we have sold 90 copies in 30 days, with five reviews, on Amazon.com. I received great news from Terri Dingess Baloga, a fellow St. Albans (WV) High grad now residing in North Carolina, who chose “The Lost Lantern” for her book club to read next month! This is exactly what an independent writer like me needs – word of mouth among READERS in other states… in other countries. I need to offer thanks to Tom Hindman, Ray Epperly, Ross Harrison, (now deployed) Jeremy Ranson, and Becky Goodwin for their honest reviews, with expectations for more soon from Bob Carpenter, Lance Carney, and Carla Williamson. If reviews add the validity buyers need, I’ll scratch and claw for all I can get. Thanks for reading!

For me, Jeannette Walls’ blockbuster “The Glass Castle” provided inspiration both as a reader and as a writer. It confirmed to me that, even as a scribe of fiction, you must lay bare your soul. You must… leave a little blood on your pages.

As a coordinator of speakers’ events in my last position I was fortunate to meet Jeannette Walls behind the scenes. It was December of 2007, and as Director of University Relations I was the person responsible for getting Ms. Walls from one venue to the next, which included, after her speech, dinner in the President’s “tower of power” as I liked to call it. She even stayed in a campus guest apartment rather than across the river in a posh hotel.

Jennette Walls and AS cpd.jpg

Because I’d loved her book and because I was each day in the early a.m. before my commute pecking away at my first novel – a fact I did not disclose – I was especially stoked about her being on campus. She was, unlike some speakers who had preceded her with only dollar signs reflecting off their cold eyes, gracious, humble, enthusiastic, generous with her time, in great humor, and receptive to hospitality. After all, part of her now famous childhood was spent just two hours “down the road.” Despite her acquired Manhattan pedigree, she projected a down-home-girl-who’d-made-it-big image. She was beloved by her audience that evening.

Because of the movie’s release (I give it 4 out of 5 thumbs up), Jeannette Walls has been thrust into the spotlight again. I like what she wrote for a Los Angeles Times piece on August 10.

“Brie Larson captured so many of the other things that I did — and do — some of them not entirely appealing, most important, the way that I had tried so hard to cut myself off from my past, to feel nothing. The portrait isn’t always flattering, but it’s accurate. And to be understood is so much more important than being flattered.”

Jeannette Walls has sold over 2.7 million copies of her memoir and it spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. That’s over five years. The film rights – a writer’s true bonanza – have been sold at least twice.

She and I have two common traits: we’re both from West Virginia and our books both have 4.5 star ratings on Amazon.com. The rub? The Glass Castle has 6,133 reviews, The Lost Lantern has (in three weeks) but three. My first novel, The Long Shadow of Hope, has a near 5-star rating, 23 reviews in a little over a year, though the second title has renewed interest in the first. John Milton may or may not have known the struggles of the Independent writer when he wrote, “Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light…”