Amazon provided the opportunity for me to create an audio book using Artificial Intelligence. It is now available for $4.99 on my Amazon page. Select “Audiobook” and pay $4.99 or select it as a free option with an Audible membership trial – R. G. LeTourneau’s Overland Trains: a complete history: Moore, Mark I.: 9798840211878: Amazon.com: Books
I received an email from Amazon yesterday stating that their printing costs were increasing on June 20, 2023. I used to sell my book at $49.95 per copy. At that cost, I made around $4.73 per copy in the U.S.
However, after June 20th, I would have made $0.17 per copy. I increased the cost to $58.65 per copy. Right now, U.S. sales net me a $9.35 royalty. After June 20th, I will make $5.63 per book. I hate increasing the book cost.
The Gregg County Historical Museum recently contacted me to purchase a small lot of the Overland Trains book. They posted today on their Facebook page with the book shining brightly on a table.
One of the best parts of researching, writing, and publishing the Overland Trains book was building relationships. I am grateful to the two dozen plus individuals that let me into their lives and family’s lives to write these stories. Christmas Eve rolled around and I received a text from Timmy Vessakosol with the following picture.
Virothai “Vic” Vessakosol is featured in the TC-497 chapter, beginning on page 255. Vic’s story with the Overland Trains begins in 1960, when he came to the United States from Thailand. He attended LeTourneau College in 1961 and worked the Alterday Program in the Publications Department. His family developed a relationship with LeTourneau company artist H. D. “Red” Reynolds and went on to represent R. G. LeTourneau, Inc. at the Royal Mining Show in 1966.
If Vic’s son had not reached out two years ago to tell his dad’s story, it is likely that I would be writing this today.
You can download the Kindle eBook versions of R. G. LeTourneau’s Overland Trains: a complete history for free on Amazon from December 25th to December 29th, 2022. Head over to Amazon and download the eBook completely free of charge – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFL91FX6.
I chose to self-publish my book because it gave me full autonomy for format, page count, and tone. One of the limitations by self-publishing with Amazon is that small businesses won’t see my book in their catalogs – Amazon calls this Expanded Distribution. Unfortunately, using this method I would have to increase my book price to over $62; that is too high in my opinion.
The alternative is that I order Author’s Copies and have Amazon ship them out to these small businesses. I end up making around $4 a book when I sell it this way. It’s not a money maker by any means. But, it does the job of getting the information into the hands of folks to read. That’s amazing…
I completed two of these orders in the last two days. You should see copies of the book at the Gregg County Historical Society and Historical Construction Equipment Association.
If you are a small business, online store, or other low-volume retailer and would like copies of my book for sale, please get ahold of me at mark@nwlinux.com. Let’s talk.
I made a few corrections to the paperback book and the eBook this morning. A reader messaged me about the coordinates being incorrect for the Monster Syncline – I omitted a 4. I capitalized “cap,” where it should have been “Cap,” Lastly, I edited the Copyright page to reflect more current data. All in all, very minor changes.
The updates are in review and should be published and available within three days (November 30, 2022).
Book available now on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFL91FX6.
When I started out writing this book, it was never about profitability. In fact, I spent more money on buying distribution rights, travel to Texas, website server/web application firewall, file storage, and other electronics than I will ever make back. With that said, here are a few statistics about the book sales and net profits.
I started selling the book in paper and eBook format in September 2022. Since then, readers have purchased 128 books, with 17 purchased as eBooks.
Total sales have net me $595.77
This is about what I would expect from a niche’ book such as this. As the author, I can purchase 999 books at printing cost, which is about $30 per book. I bought 20 books at cost for a total of around $600. Many of these I have given away or will mail to folks that helped me out during the writing process.
Using Amazon KDP, I can order up to 999 Author’s Copies of my book. Amazon sells me these copies at the printing cost, which is around $28 per book. I will use these copies to sell locally and mail to various folks who helped me along the way.
Overland Trains 