Newest Edition to Historic ABC's

ABC's of Mayan Culture has been a difficult but exciting project.  Most of the photographs in this book are ones that I took myself when I honeymooned in the Yucatan.

http://www.amazon.com/ABCs-Mayan-Culture-Historic-ebook/dp/B00D8DLKJQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1370535894&sr=1-1&keywords=brent+maynard

Hope you have happy reading!

Success

This month I have reached my highest author rank ever thanks to you my readers.  Thank you so much for your interest in my Historic ABC's series which has been making this success possible.  I am very happy that you are interested in many of the same things that fascinate me.

For those of you who don't know Amazon tracks its top 500,000 authors and gives hourly updates.  At the end of June 2nd my readers helped me go higher than I have ever gone before.  I truly appreciate all those of you who buy and borrow my books.

As always happy reading and thank you.

Historic ABC's

As of right now my Historic ABC's series is the most popular thing I have up on Amazon.com.  It's nice to see how so many people are interested in many of the subjects I've written about.

Historic ABC’s started out as an idea when I learned that I was going to be a father. There are many ABC books out there that are good and educational. Kids should know that A is for Apple. But I had a hard time finding anything that said A is for Anubis or Attila the Hun, Asgard, Aristotle, and others. History is one of my passions and it was something that I wanted to share with my son. The purpose of these books is not to give a complete list or to give every known fact about the subject. The purpose is to introduce the readers both old and young to a subject in hopes that their interest will be sparked and they will want to learn more on their own.

ABC's of Navajo Culture especially has been selling several copies.  My newest book ABC's of Japanese Culture still hasn't sold which has really surprised me.  If you haven't already I hope you'll do a search on Amazon for Historic ABC's and check out this exciting series.

Early Christmas

I've been getting more interested in some of the best selling authors on Kindle Direct Publishing.  One thing I noticed about a couple of them is that they only sell Christmas books.  So it was that in the beginning of May I tapped into the Christmas spirit to produce a couple of books.  Probably won't sell any until October, but hey, I'm prepared.

Five Little Elves is a poem about workers at the North Pole and The Reason for the Season is a story about a mother who explains why Christmas is important and why we celebrate it.

Want to be an Author?

Publishing through a publishing house today has become much more complicated than necessary.  Once upon a time any aspiring author could send in a manuscript and could have contact with a publisher about a story.  The publishing company would then send a letter accepting or rejecting the book.  Simple.

Today a publishing company will almost never deal directly with an author.  An author must have an agent, someone who the author needs to pay to speak on their behalf.  With the downturn in the economy many publishers don't want to pick up new authors but would rather stick with authors that they know can sell books.  A lot of us just don't have the money or time to work through agents.

Amazon has undertaken a bold experiment that enables aspiring authors to produce and sell electronic books.  Kindle Direct Publishing enables authors to submit their projects and have them ready for sell within hours.

Authors should not use this as an opportunity to be lazy, books ought to be throughly edited and refined before submission.  An advantage that authors have through the system though is that they are able to update the books, in case something is missed.  It is better to fix all issues first however so that your book does not get a bad reputation.

Working through KDP has really worked for me.  Although I am far from a best selling author I have been able to earn money from being involved with this program.  Some authors have more success than others.  Some authors are able to sell daily while others' sales are best measured monthly.  This month I had a very successful week and went up really high in the rankings.  Since then I have not sold a single book.

KDP accepts all kinds of books from foreign language, fantasy, historical, and romance.  Most of the books that I have published have been children's books for my son.  I have also published books for older readers including a novella and two novels.  The possibilities are literally endless with KDP.  If you want to be an author and start selling immediately you should check out KDP.

American Animals... Finally Published!

I feel in a way that I've been in a battle with Kindle Direct Publishing this weekend.  They refused to publish my newest book twice and I was getting scared that I would have to either delete a lot of it or completely redo my formatting.

Thank goodness the book has finally been published and can now be viewed on Amazon.com!  The reason amazon was saying no was that they were saying that I was writing in non-supported languages.  I wrote the book in seven different languages.

It is in English, Spanish, Navajo, Shawnee, French, German, and Hopi.  English, Spanish, French, and German have always been the main European based languages here in North America.  I also chose to include various Native American languages as well.  Navajo and Hopi are close to my heart since I've been living on the Rez for a while now.

Top 100,000

I am officially one of the top 100,000 selling authors on Amazon!