Armed Takeover of the USA: What Would You Do?

Recently I came across a December 9, 2013 article entitled Nuremberg Revisited in a blog named Israpundit. A statement in the article has been haunting me:

After the shooting and mass murder of school children and teachers in Sandy Hook, CT, in December of 2012, Obama and his minions began demonizing guns and ammunition, and championed eliminating all guns. Yet the US Federal government and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition for domestic use. The DHS has national, not foreign, authority, yet purchased 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets that are even banned for military use by the Geneva Convention, enough for a seven-year war with Americans, DHS also purchased $400,000 worth of radiation-protection pills, and thousands of bulletproof roadside checkpoint booths.(Emphasis added).

In another Israpundit article on December 6, 2013 I saw where the army could come from that might use these weapons. It states,

"Back in 2010, Obama issued an executive order to expedite immigrant visa requests from Islamic countries. A person from a Muslim country could become a U.S. citizen in as little as ten weeks, with no I.D. and no declaration of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution. … Obama's Immigration Bill and his ensuing amnesty are not mainly about the 13 million or so illegal Latinos in this country but it is the back door entrance for over one hundred million Muslims to be brought to the US by 2018 – and, by some indications, such numbers could be as high as 150 million. Naturally, their presence would imply an intrinsic establishment of sharia law as the law of the American nation. The mainstream media is quietly avoiding to mention that Obama's amnesty plan specifically speeds up the visa process for immigrants from Muslim countries (Sections 2317 & 2318 of the amnesty bill).

What would I do? What if these weapons are used to impose some form of martial law in the USA? Jesus in the Bible tells us, "Love your enemies!" (Luke 6:35). What if Washington DC is locked down because President Obama refuses to step down with the backing of a civilian army? Jesus continued, "Do good to them" (Luke 6:35). How could I love and do good to a massively oppressive force as is being witnessed by 450,000 Christians in Central African Republic? "Lend to them without expecting to be repaid" (Luke 6:35).

What would you do?

Example of Parallel Symmetry From Exodus 19

Parallel Symmetry is a type of literary structure found in the Bible where a set events happen, such as A-B-C-D, and then these same themes are repeated, A'-B'-C'-D'. Recognizing this pattern can help identify a progression, clarify the text, or even reveal subtle issues.

At the time when the Ten Commandments were told to Moses, he heard the voice of the Lord but only partially obeyed it. If you have a Bible available, I am looking at Exodus 19 and 20.

The Lord called to Moses out of the mountain stating, "If you [plural] will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured people …" (Exodus 19:5 ESV). When Moses stated this to the people, they all agreed. Everything is good so far; the Lord's voice will provide direction and they will obey it.

The Lord then positioned Moses as spokesman, "… that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever" (v19:9). God was granting authority to Moses, but I suggest He was not stating Moses must be the only conduit. He was not precluding the people from listening directly to His voice.

See if you can see where Moses did not follow the voice of the Lord:

	Lord's instructions		Moses' actions
A.	Consecrate the people and tell them to wash their garments (v10)		Consecrated the people and they washed their garments (v14)
B.	Tell the people to be ready for the third day, for the Lord will come down on the mountain and be seen (v11)		Told the people to be ready for the third day (v15a)
C.	Set limits for the people: if you touch the mountain, you will die and not live (v12,13a)		Told the people not to touch a woman (v15b)
D.	The trumpet will sound a long blast (v13b)		On the third day, there was thunder, lightning, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast (v16)
E.	The people shall come up to the mountain (v13c)		Moses took the people out of their camp and brought them to the foot of the mountain (v17)

Did you see it? Moses did not tell the people about touching the mountain!

Please allow me to paraphrase the relevant portions of this story's remainder (Exodus 19:18-20:21):
the Lord told Moses to go up the mountain and then privately stated to him, "Warn them about the mountain!" Moses told the Lord of his hesitation; apparently he did not like the limits that the Lord had set. The Lord said okay, go down, get Aaron, and bring him up. The Ten Commandments were then spoken.

One of the saddest verses of the Bible is then stated by the people to Moses. In their fear they said, "You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die" (v20:19). I suggest that because Moses had failed to warn them correctly, they misinterpreted the source of the thunder, lightning, and trumpet. Instead of learning how to properly hear the source, they intensely feared the source. Moses said, "Do not fear" but the people stood at a distance. They missed it.

Eventually these people all died in the wilderness, for only those under 20 years of age at the time of the exodus were allowed to enter the Promised Land. Immediately prior to this new generation's entry, Moses gave a new appeal: "Obey his [the Lord's] voice" (Deuteronomy 30:2). Once again, the Lord was stating the importance of listening and obeying His voice.

God does speak and it is always for the good. I, like others, need to be more consistent about listening and then obeying our Lord.

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If you enjoyed this analysis of Exodus 19 and 20, you should also appreciate the many Biblical insights in my book Joshua's Spiritual Warfare: Understanding the Chiasms of Joshua. You can also see this book on Amazon.

New Christian Authors ask, "How Much Do You Earn on Your Books?"

I have heard it stated that one out of every three Christian adults would someday like to get a book into print. If that is anywhere near true, then there is a tremendous market for those publishing services that can help new authors move from concept to final copy. That is why there is a plethora of companies, both small and large, that are scrambling to be of assistance.

As an independent Christian self-publisher, I do not depend on one of these services. I locate someone that can provide what I need at the time so that I can manage the entire process. Most importantly, I stay totally away from vanity publishers that appear to me as a total rip-off.

Vanity publishers include companies such as Xulon, AuthorHouse, Lulu, and PublishAmerica. There are many besides these; each of their contracts and services are somewhat different and some are more reputable than others. As I see it, their major purpose is to take an author's completed manuscript and convert it to a specific form of PDF so that a printed book may be reviewed and approved by the author. Page layout and formatting are a normal part of their service because most authors are untrained on what constitutes a quality manuscript. Some charge a large up-front fee, some require purchasing a large number, and many provide a very small return to the author for each printed book.

To the vanity publisher, their customer is the author and not the one that will purchase the title. To help their customers, they will generally offer services such as editing, marketing assistance, development of a business plan, webpage development, etc., all of which can be added to the total cost because few are knowledgeable of these things.

I think "vanity" is an appropriate name for these publishers. They seem to appeal to vane authors who somehow have allusions of how great their manuscript is or will be. What they are doing is helping contribute to the American economy as they scrape together their money to help keep these vanity presses in business.

As a true independent self-publisher, I run the risk of overlooking something significant. Quality is a big issue and readers have an expectation that the book will be similar to that from a traditional publisher. I hire people to perform the different types of editing; for those areas where I lack the skill, I read material that assists me in the learning process and I buy the software that I need. In short, I become the manager of my manuscript because I care more than anyone else about it.

I use Lightning Source to print my titles. They are the largest print-on-demand provider and I find them to be a quality organization. Some potential authors buy a copy of my Joshua book simply to check its quality; I would hope they read it as well.

My first title, Joshua's Spiritual Warfare: Understanding the Chiasms of Joshua, sells for $14.99 on Amazon and many other on-line retailers. Lightning Source's charge for printing this 232-page book is currently $3.92 and their distribution fee is $3.00. That leaves $8.07 for me to recover my expenses. Published in 2008, I am now able to state that I have covered my initial expenses and am beginning to recover my many, many hours of writing and marketing.

By comparison, I recently talked with a Christian author that wrote a novel in 2007 using one of these vanity publishers: he earns $0.60 for each book that is sold for nearly $20. Another Christian author recently signed a contract that required 3,000 books to be printed; most of them sit in a warehouse somewhere waiting for the next sale through Amazon or some other retail source. Another author had a large amount of additional services that proved to be very costly.

Like most published authors, I find the whole marketing effort is my biggest challenge. For every hour that I spent preparing that manuscript (14 months at 20 hours per week), I have probably spent five times that in marketing. With the saturation of both printed and on-line books in the marketplace, it is extremely difficult to get the general public to find and then ultimately purchase any book.

As publishing has become substantially easier, many new titles have been recently released; yet the number of people reading seems to be going down. I am told that the average Christian book sells 200 books in its lifetime and that includes well- established authors.

The question that each potential Christian author should seriously address is their motive: "Is God really in this?" I cannot predict the total cost of using a vanity publisher. I do know that the effort to be an independent self-publisher is very significant, but it is also the least costly for me. Another question might be, "Do I have the skills to be an independent self-publisher?"

Chiasm, Chiasmus, or Chiastic Structure?

I was recently asked this question, "Is a chiasm the same as a chiasmus?" Also, "Is the word 'chiastic' related and if so, how?" This article attempts to diffuse this obfuscated mess.

What I am discussing is the use of a writing style that is found throughout the Bible. Yes, there is a popular singer named Chiasm; not the same. And there are the medical terms named chiasm, chiasma, and chiasmata that involve how the human eye is able to see; not the same. I am referring to the repeating A-B-C ... C′-B′-A′ pattern that is found in many New or Old Testament passages. See my article What is a Chiasm (or Chiasmus)? for more information.

Some Christian authors use the word 'chiasm' and others use the word 'chiasmus' but both mean the same thing when referring to the Bible. Other prominent Christian writers stay away from the words 'chiasm' and 'chiasmus', but instead refer to 'chiastic structure', 'chiastic parallelism', or 'chiastic repetition.' You may also find words such as 'concentric parallelism' and 'inverted parallelism' that again promote the same concept.

The words 'chiasm', 'chiasmus', and 'chiastic' do not appear in the Bible, just as the word 'paragraph' does not appear in the Bible. The identification of chiasms can help us understand God's emphasis in the passage.

In 1942, Nils Lund popularized the word 'chiasmus' in the United States by writing Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in the Form and Function of Chiastic Structures. Lund used the words 'chiasmus' and 'chiastic' in the title, but others over the years have abbreviated and/or modified his original concept. The result has been that these well-intended linguists have obfuscated the foray by using other names for the same concept.

To me, I prefer to call this reverse literary structure a chiasm, yet a chiasm is a chiasmus and a chiasmus is a chiasm; both are examples of the chiastic structure when referring to the Bible.

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In my book Joshua's Spiritual Warfare: Understanding the Chiasms of Joshua, I use a rigorous analysis of the book of Joshua to show how to find chiasms and then how to extract meaning from them. My article, Background of Chiasms, is adapted from that book.

New Christian Authors Ask, "How Many Books Should I Print?"

Possibly the biggest killer of very good and potentially life-changing authors is a poor decision to the question, "How many books should I print?"

Imagine a great author with his or her first title now published. Sitting in a warehouse somewhere are four thousand copies of that title. A robot is waiting for someone using Amazon or a buyer from a bookstore or the author himself to order one or more copies. Reality of today's market suddenly hits them because the books do not move like once hoped. Frustration and discouragement sets in and this great author never publishes anything else.

I recently developed friendship with a Christian author that has fallen in that trap in the last six months. Today he is having a book signing at a local bookstore. If he is fortunate, he will sell ten or twelve books today. There remain over 3,800 copies of his title in a warehouse in Georgia. He has given many copies away hoping that someone will recognize the great work that it is. I truly wish him well.

Unfortunately, new authors simply do not understand how very competitive the market for books has become. These same new authors know in their heart that they have a very viable product and that many would benefit from reading it. In some cases it is excessive ego that over inflates the manuscript's potential, but in other cases it is the competition that does the person in. But in either cases, discouragement sets in and this new author does not attempt another. So sad!

DO NOT PRINT BEYOND THE BOOK'S POTENTIAL!!!
If you don't know the potential, be conservative. Besides an underestimation of today's market, the biggest culprits are the various subsidy publishers. Sometimes referred to as vanity publishers, these businesses feed on the ego of new authors to let them see a false potential of their manuscript. Naive pride kicks in; soon these great authors have a contract to put 3000 or 5000 copies of their great work into print. The work is probably great, the subsidy publisher does a great job getting the manuscript ready, the front cover is enticing, the marketing effort is exhausting, and the book dies on the shelf.

Christian publishers can be just as manipulative as non-Christian publishers when it comes to creating false expectations. Buyer beware!

In 2007, I was about to sign a contract with Xulon Publishing when somehow I came across an article about true self-publishing. I would have spent over $3,000 for their basic package; today my books would still be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Excess books are eventually dumped onto the resale book market and sold for a mere shadow of their initial value.

A reviewer for Xulon stated that she thought the manuscript was well prepared and some other blah-blah-blah words that hit my pride button. Most new authors have this pride issue going on, and I certainly was one. I probably would have selected one of the middle-tier packages which would have resulted in even more books sitting on some shelf. As a result of the market forces and my resulting discouragement, I never would have authored another title.

Instead I went the self-publishing route where I am the independent publisher. No subsidy publishers or vanity publishers are involved. Instead, I coordinate all of the efforts and order only as many books as I need. I found a Christian service that would convert the title into print-ready format that Lightning Source could use. After some editing, I eventually had 250 books printed. Today I have just five left from that initial printing: 59% were sold and the remainder were given away.

I use the same print-on-demand technology that Xulon and other vanity publishers use: when someone orders that book on Amazon, it is printed and shipped within a few days after the Buy Now button is clicked on Amazon. What I don't have is boxes of printed books sitting in either my home or in a warehouse somewhere.

I now have an easier decision: am I now ready to prepare a second edition which incorporates some editing changes, or should I print a dozen more for my own immediate sales? With Lightning Source, I can order just one copy if that is what I need.

"How many books should you print?" My market is Christian non-fiction; you may wish to adjust what I suggest if you are working with another genre. I suggest that fifty may be a good number but that should be adjusted based on the number of book signings that you have already scheduled. If your church is promoting a book signing, they would know you the best so you might add an additional 20% of the average Sunday attendance (assuming a moderately sized church). If you have scheduled a signing at a bookstore, you might add another ten books. You probably don't yet know what works and what doesn't work in your market – I suggest you purchase enough for the next 45 days. At the end of a month, re-evaluate and buy more when your inventory gets low. That is the beauty of print-on-demand.

If you have aspirations of authoring a second title, please do not engage yourself with one of these vanity presses if they want you to print many copies. The result will most certainly be that you will have too many printed, you will think you are not a good author (which is probably not true), and your reading public will suffer.

Christian Authors: "How Inviting is Your Website’s Coloration?"

When people visit your website, what do they see? Are the colors pleasing and engaging, or is there visual conflict that triggers their mind to disengage? This is my story of how I corrected that problem.

In my opinion, Christian self-publishers should create and change their own webpages. Based on my experience, webpages need continual care. If we farm out this responsibility, the quality will likely suffer greatly. A professional may do a superb job creating our websites, but most self-publishers are not in a position where we can call on them for modifications on a regular basis. This means that we or a family member should manage our own websites; managing our websites means managing our color schemes.

I confess: I am color challenged. Yes I dress myself and I know my basic colors. That said, my wife is continually suggesting to me that something blue is really green or vice versa. She can tell me what mauve and teal are, and she can distinguish between daffodil and canary yellow. I can't.

If you looked at any of my websites prior to this week, I'm sure you would have agreed. I knew that complimentary colors were important but I had no idea how to get there. In addition, my Adobe Photoshop skills are very weak.

I currently have fifty-eight (58) webpages broken into five families: my three books (Joshua's Spiritual Warfare, A Garden of Love, and A Topical Treasury of Proverbs), my business (Prayer Gardeners), and the Gethsemane Prayer Garden. In addition there is my blog (Bible-Discernments.Blogspot.com) that you are currently reading. Each of these had different color themes and frankly they were uninviting. Two were light tan, two were pink but the wrong pink, and another was a pale army green. The background to this blog was from a beautiful photograph of Japanese anemone, but the color was altered to an unappealing purple. In short, I'm color challenged – I can't imagine what people thought when they arrived at my website.

Taking this color problem by the horns, I hoped Photoshop had the answers and it did. My goal was to find two color ranges that complimented each other. I opened this photo in Photoshop because it appears on the webpages for my A Garden of Love book:

After some experimentation, I found that the Eyedropper Tool and Color Picker in Photoshop's Tools panel (left side) provided the solution. I used the Eyedropper to click on a medium pink color from that photo. I was interested in a range of colors, so I right clicked on the eyedropper, changing it to a 5 pixel x 5 pixel range. By clicking the Eyedropper, the square called Foreground Color (at the bottom of the same Tools panel) was changed to that same medium pink. I then clicked on that square whereby the Color Picker window was displayed showing that the color is #FCBDD0. That color became the basic pink that now appears throughout all my websites.

My next challenge was to find a complimentary color to that basic pink. I used the Color Picker window to determine that. With #FCBDD0 as my base color, I found I could change one of these to keep in the same family of colors: hue, saturation or brightness. In that way, I found a baby blue that was an excellent match: #BDF5FC. That is the blue color that appears as the background on many of my webpages.

Lastly, I needed other pinks that were in the same range as the first one that was selected. I again used the Color Picker, moved the slider as needed and gave each a try by pasting it into the CSS file associated with the HTML.

Now when you visit my websites, there are essentially two color themes: for those that are related to the Prayer Gardeners business including the Gethsemane Prayer Garden, there is a pink background with complimentary baby blue accents. I use the name Bible Discernments as the publishing division of Prayer Gardeners; the theme for those, including this blog, are baby blue in the text area with the same pink accents.

Time will tell if it makes a difference; it should.
(NOTE: I use Windows; if using a Mac, the instructions may be slightly different).

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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Christian Authors: Optimize Your Blog With a Directory

UPDATED ON April 28, 2015:
Since publication of this article, I separated my blog writings:

• Flower and garden related blog is http://prayergardeners.blogspot.com/ and its directory is http://www.prayergardeners.com/blogspotindex.html
• Bible related blog is http://bible-discernments.blogspot.com/ and its directory is http://www.bible-discernments.com/blogs.html

Thank you for your understanding and patience. Tom

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From a book marketing perspective, I have come to understand the purpose of blogging: to interest new readers into the marketing funnel. There are other purposes, don't get me wrong, such as found in the advice given or the humor offered or the story told. But from a promotional standpoint, blogs do not create repeat sales but rather have the potential to generate new sales.

I have been blogging for 2½ years, averaging two blog entries per month. Blogging advocates suggest we should attempt to compose very frequent entries, approaching one per day. Well maybe, but I find it is very hard to develop good meaningful content with that frequency which would draw perspective buyers further into the marketing funnel.

One of the discouraging things I find about blogging is how the lesser articles are made much less obvious while promoting only the most popular. I can write a good article about some flower or add some Bible insight about some topic, but unless it is one of the most popular blogs, it will go virtually unnoticed.

In terms of the marketing funnel, an initial article may draw the person in but the hope is that you will retain them so that they visit other articles that you wrote, most of which are buried. What intrigues one will not have an impact on another.

Therefore, I decided to build an indexed directory of blog articles with the hope of retaining my readers. I placed this directory on my website; each item in the directory points to an article that appears either on my blog or somewhere on my website. The directory is indexed into seven categories: Chiasms in the Bible, Christian Walk, etc. Each of the categories is consistent with the labels that I established in Blogger.

The second step was to add a seven-line header to Blogger that points the reader to that directory. The first of the seven lines is identified below as "Index of Articles by Thomas B. Clarke."

To see this in action, try going to the teaching on Contentment. Then click on one of the six directory choices, listed as "Index of All Articles by Thomas B. Clarke." By clicking on "Chiasms in the Bible", you are directed to http://www.prayergardeners.com/blogspotindex.html#Chiasms. Hopefully if your interest is in chiasms, one of those article might pique your interest.

I have seen other attempts to add a directory to either Blogger or WorkPress, but I think this is more straight forward. One down side is that every time you create a new entry on your blog, you must now take the additional step of adding that to your indexed directory. However, if you develop this approach, you should have greater retention of your blog readers.

Bon voyage, Tom

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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Writing Career: Retiring With a Purpose

As I look out the window in front of me, a small and very still lake is quietly moving towards the outlet several miles away. Lily pads with balls of white flowers still remain on this fall day; the geese have left the lake for their morning travels; and a light mist which was over the lake since daybreak is slowly lifting. Tucked into a secluded portion of the Adirondacks in New York State, this retreat seems the perfect place to begin my retirement.

My wife and I arrived here on Saturday; it is now five days later and I have just finished some final work for my employer of twelve years. The remainder of this month will be paid vacation. Next month I start collecting Social Security retirement.

The Failing Social Security System
In a sense, I am very content with knowing that I will receive Social Security. I paid into that system and now I can start receiving that benefit. By withdrawing money from my 401-K and other investments, I should be able to keep the same standard of living that I maintained while I was working. All this is good.

My body is healthy and my mind is still reasonably sharp (ask my wife about that: "Where did I put the xxx?"), so I should be able to continue to contribute in some way. For me, I intend to be a full time self-published Christian author. That will be my contribution or if you will my purpose.

I can certainly see where there is a temptation for newly retired people to seek a new lifestyle: some form of volunteer work, the projects around the home that have been left for many years, the development of relationships with other seniors, the yearning to tell others about Jesus, and of course the enjoyment of our grandchildren.

If there was less money available in the Social Security system, as there will be for those who are younger, more may be required. Rather than transitioning from full-time work to full retirement, it may be necessary to work on a part-time basis. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? Most of us that are newly retired can still contribute in some way. As our bodies and minds continue to break down, this will become less and less feasible. Eventually that would mean full retirement, but it is not necessary at the normal retirement age.

Not all people are well-suited for self-employment; it takes a certain entrepreneurial spirit to be able to succeed at that. On the other hand, our society must adjust to having small jobs that men and women in semi-retirement can move to. These would be potentially less stressful as well as lower paying jobs. Yet they could provide the necessary income to counter the reduced Social Security payments.

Most importantly, semi-retired and retired people need a purpose. While employed in some way, our contribution was our purpose. Without a purpose, depression and physical illnesses can develop. By being active, we get to fulfill our reason for being here.

Most importantly, we should be asking God at this stage, "What do you want me to do?" His purpose, whether it is writing or telling Bible stories to our grandchildren, should become our reason for being here.

Therefore, the failing Social Security system is not something to be feared or to make us apprehensive. Rather it is an opportunity to help us fulfill God's purpose in our lives.

Christian Authors: Remarketing with Google AdWords

Remarketing with Google AdWords

Have you noticed graphical ads suddenly appearing from companies where you have either done business or considered doing business? I recently ordered some products from Land's End using their web interface; suddenly their ads started popping up in various locations throughout the internet. Another example is Budget Inn where I was doing a price comparison of alternative motels – ultimately I chose another motel. However, for several months I was seeing Budget Inn advertisements. Why? Remarketing.

I didn't click on these ads because I did not have a need at the time. However, they left an impression. Many marketing studies have shown that familiarization often leads to purchase decisions, where a single presentation gets far fewer sales.

In the last two weeks, I began promoting my book, Joshua's Spiritual Warfare, to those that have previously visited one of my webpages. By using Google AdWords, there have been nearly 1400 presentations of one of my four graphical ads, such as:

To get to this point, I developed a series of webpages that attracted many new visitors each day. Once the webpages were tuned for marketing, I was able to begin the remarketing effort. What follows is a description of that process.

Organic web pages
Soon after publishing this book, I realized I needed a way to get people to know about it. Placing my book on Amazon and other retail sites was inadequate, as were the several webpages that I developed that presented content of the book. I needed a way to get people to discover my site. The way I did that was to write a compelling webpage that described something that is not very well known: chiasms in the Bible.

Perhaps you have never heard about chiasms. If that is you, I suggest that you open another tab on your browser and then perform a search on "What is a chiasm?" or possibly "define chiasm". You should see my article, What is a chiasm? Definition and explanation of the chiastic structure by www.bible-discernments.com. In many cases, when people search for information about chiasms or the chiastic structure, they will find my article at the top or near the top of the list of candidate page.

The What is a chiasm? article is an example of an organic webpage. I did not pay anyone to put it on the search engine's first page; it got there through a long process of editing and re-editing so that the article would be both informative and compelling. The average person spends nearly five minutes reading the content; there are five hundred new visitors each month.

Focus on marketing
I had a problem, however. The large number of visitors did not translate to a large number of sales. They got there because someone mentioned chiasms or the chiastic structure in something they read or heard, and they did some research to understand this topic. I suspect some people may have felt either skeptical or exhausted after having read that article. There was no reason for them to continue to learn more.

Once I decided to try remarketing, I realized I had to change the emphasis of the article from information to marketing. I needed to keep the article compelling so that people would stay engaged, but I needed to drive them towards other webpages. That meant revising the content so that people would clearly see the value of the chiastic approach: it would change the way they read the Bible. They also needed to understand my qualifications – very few people have written anything about chiasms in the Bible yet it opens a whole new understanding of the Scriptures.

I reviewed and modified as necessary nearly every single sentence in that article, added the information about myself and the book at the bottom of the article, and created a webpage where people can see other books about chiasms: Chiasm Bookstore - Recommended Books About Chiastic Structure. At the same time, I added the Google remarketing tags to my webpages so Google could begin to capture visitors.

Remarketing
I must admit that I found Google's information about remarketing to be challenging at times. You can read about it at Google Help on Remarketing. Google seems to be continuously learning how to make their product better, which means they are better positioned to provide details about their system.

On August 14th, after achieving the 100-visitor minimum for remarketing, I turned it on. In the last two weeks, there have been almost 1400 presentations of one or more of my graphical ads to those that visited one of my webpages. My cost has been $6.84 during this period as 5 people clicked on one of my four ads.

Monitoring the process
I have noticed an increase in the number of returning visitors to my website over this two-week period, but it is too early to be conclusive about that. Yet there have not been any sales during this period! I daily check the statistics, noting how any changes that I make are reflected in the ads responsiveness.

I need to continually refine my use of this system as I know I have just scratched on the surface. And I realize Google will make their product even better and provide more tools to help target the correct population.

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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Overcoming Self-Condemnation

These days it seems that many Christians are living in a world of inadequacy – inadequacy with themselves because of their own personal failures. As I was writing one of the workbooks in the Proverbs Untangled series, I received the following direction from the Lord regarding this sense of guilt and shame. If that is you, then dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I pray that you take this word from the Lord seriously.

I think we can all agree that Jesus Christ was the only perfect man to walk this earth. Let's say that His perfection is 100%.

According to Matthew 9:13, did Jesus come for the imperfect or the perfect? If we perceive ourselves as incapable of sinning or making mistakes, where is our need for Jesus? Or more to the point, if we are constantly striving to be that 100% but failing, where is our need for Jesus?

If we are operating at something less that 100%, say 80% perfect, what does Romans 8:1 say about the remaining 20%? It says, "For there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus."

Our sense of inadequacy says that we are focusing on that 20%, dwelling on each time we add another circumstance to that stumbling block. This sense of inadequacy says, "I could do it, I could achieve it, if I was only better at what I do."

Paul, after stating in Romans 7 that he continues to sin despite his efforts to achieve better, continues to that relieving word in Romans 8:1. Paul is stating that his 20% is covered by Christ; he is at 100%. His mistakes and sins do not lead to condemnation, for they have been forgiven and covered by grace.

If we are in Christ Jesus, we are now a finished work. We will continue to do things that we should not do, but to the glory of God, these are forgiven (John 3:17). Yes, we should continue to grow so that our 20% becomes less, but know that grace covers all.

If you are plagued by a sense of inadequacy, please know that you are 100% perfect in the eyes of Christ.

A Birthday Tribute to My Mom

Mom, this is a tribute to you.

Today, on your 91st birthday, I thought it appropriate to let the world know what a great mom you are. If only the world would listen!

Loie Clarke is not the average, run-of-the-mill, middle class traditional American mom, whoever that might be. Married in 1943 to your high school sweetheart Bruce Clarke, you have always kept an upbeat, positive approach to life. If you had problems with Dad, you kept them to yourself. I think it is fair to say that your rosy cheeks are an outward presentation of your inner self.

You were never a complainer; it was simply not part of your vocabulary. Complaining was just a total contradiction of that positive “can-do” personality. You have your opinions, sometimes very strong opinions, but those opinions were never presented in a critical way. In thinking back over the years, I gave you plenty to complain about, but you did your very best to present the best side of things.

How often I have told the story of how dad came home one day from the tennis court. The doctor had told him to start getting regular exercise because, as a man in his mid-forties, he was having too many health problems that were related to stress on the job. He took up tennis because he had played it frequently in his youth. Tennis was not your sport, knowing little more than which end of the racket to hold.

But tennis suddenly became your sport. Dad came home from the tennis court and announced to you that he and his partner had just won a match. Your inquiry set you into action, for dad confessed that his partner had been a much younger woman. That next day, you were on the tennis court and you never looked back.

To my knowledge, you never complained, you just took action. (I wouldn’t blame you if you really told him off, but that does not seem part of your nature).

You also have a very spunky side about you. You would not have represented the State of Minnesota in the National Senior Olympics Tennis Championships if you were not very determined. You encouraged Dad to go for the championships, and you and Dad both almost won – twice or was it three times?

I love this photograph of you dancing last year at Crysta's wedding. In a sense, it shows the type of encouragement that you spread, such as all the many girl's tennis teams you coached in the Minneapolis area. I’m quite certain that your upbeat and determined attitude was part of the many seasons of championship tennis.

Jini, my younger sister, and I are your only children. I can’t speak for Jini, but I can certainly compliment you on not meddling with our situations when we became adults. You seemed to very well know that, as difficult as things became between me and my first wife, that it would be contra-productive for you to try and make things right. The intervention of the mother-in-law would certainly not have been welcome, and you knew your limits. This is also consistent with your great aversion to conflict.

I got my love of flowers from you. As a child, I well remember how you planted the many bright salmon, yellow, orange, and red tuberous begonias in front of our house. Near them you planted many luscious pink, purple, violet, and coral impatiens that you watered daily. Now, as caretaker of the Gethsemane Prayer Garden, I can say that I first learned gardening from you, even if it was just from a distance.

Your spiritual walk over the last few years is the biggest reason for me to give you tribute. Dad was not a man without opinions, and his agnostic view of a Godless world was certainly a problem for a woman that had been baptized as a teenager. You honored his view as the head of the home, which kept you home on most Sunday mornings.

Towards the end of dad’s time here on earth, as he mellowed more and more, you started to explore what it means to be a Christian. Since he passed five years ago, you have blossomed in your faith. You are attending church services on a regular basis, going to Bible studies, teaching Bible lessons over the phone to a friend that is a Mason, and attempting to exhibit your Christian faith by your walk. As our Lord continues His work in you, may the fruits of your faith be more and more abundant!

There is much to be done in this world, for our focus must be on the Kingdom of God. I am so glad that you are part of this whole mystery of Jesus Christ that is now revealed.

Happy birthday Mom, I love you,
Tom

Christian Authors: Assessing Your Skills

After I graduated from college many years ago, I took a job as a math teacher at a middle school teaching inner city students. I did this, not because that was my training during college, but because it allowed me to avoid the Vietnam War. At the time, young men were being drafted to go to Vietnam, yet school teachers were exempt from the draft. I was not trained to be a teacher, but the school district thought I was qualified – I was not.

After a year of torturing the poor students, I took a job as a landscaper where the only thing I could torture was plants and my fellow workers. I learned a great deal in those two years, and that is the basis for my part-time work as the caretaker of my church's Gethsemane Prayer Garden.

I then started my professional career working for a small consulting engineering company in Syracuse. It had been a long winter with minimal income from unemployment, so I decided to pursue what I had been trained for in college: civil engineering. My first responsibilities were to climb down sanitary sewers during rainstorms so we could measure the depth of the liquid at the bottom of the sewer – and then write about it. Our purpose was to find out where the excess water was coming from.

Today I am in semi-retirement, working fewer hours as the director of the computer department at a smaller company, and spending more hours at home where I can write what I believe God has called me to write. My job climbing down sewers lasted four years and then I was moved to the accounting department where they had just purchased their first computer. Small beginnings.

Not all writers have the where-with-all to become independent self-publishers. For me, God has given me the skill as a computer programmer so that I can more easily handle the many nuances of this information age. The publishing industry is very different from that of writing, especially for fiction writers. If you find setting styles in Microsoft Word or writing your own HTML to be a challenge, possibly independent self-publishing is not for you.

With my previous books, I hired a person to design the cover and prepare the PDF for the printer. With my current series entitled Proverbs Untangled, I have chosen to design my own cover and prepare my own PDF. That means learning Adobe's Photoshop, hardly a product for the faint-at-heart. I also will have to learn Adobe's InDesign to help move the completed MS Word documents to a properly configured and better formatted PDF. I have much to learn about layout and I am excited to do so.

I am such a nit-picker about the aesthetics of the manuscript, and this too is essential as the reader will be able to quickly determine that something is wrong. I believe God gave me the nature to pursue quality in this manner, but I realize I need the eyes of others to help me see what I don't.

Understand that you will make many mistakes along the way as an independent self-publisher. Subsidy publishers rightfully earn their money by helping those with weaker computer skills, and for many this is really the only viable choice. Writing and publishing are viable for me because God has prepared me and I am now moving towards full retirement from my regular job.

I'm excited about where God is taking me and I remain open to hearing His voice of direction. He has enabled me with both the financial means and the fortitude to become a self-publisher. I was able to purchase Adobe's Creative Suite package which is quite costly. Now my goal is to get this series of books into the market for $50 each. We'll see. There are eBook versions and the inspiration to put it into multiple languages and alternate Bible translations. God knows the plan and I believe He will provide the way because He gave me the vision to pursue this.

That is the most important part of self-publishing. Is God really in this? If you have heard His voice of direction, what is stopping you?


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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Why I Don't Market My Books to Bookstores

Return Policy

I was so surprised. An email came into my inbox stating that one of my books was being returned and I should expect it in the mail. The email was from Lightning Source, my printer. I knew this could happen but I did not expect it to really happen. Who would ever want to return A Garden of Love?

I presume that the return came from a bookstore that had special ordered the book, but apparently this was not what the customer wanted. OK, I can accept that.

At the end of the month, my financial statement came as a second surprise, or more like a shock. For this transaction, my account was debited the cost that the bookstore paid for the book (not my wholesale price), and I was charged a fee for redistributing the book back to me. The effect was I paid $1 less than full retail price on this transaction.

In this case, the book was returned in excellent condition, but that is not always true. Yesterday I met with a small publisher that told how a bookstore was regularly returning books that had obviously been read. In a short period of time, this bookstore had returned fifteen books. In order to avoid customer dissatisfaction, this store's policy was to accept returns from their customer regardless of the book's condition. The result was the publisher had fifteen new, slightly used, and obviously used books on his hand.

When a book is returned from the bookstore, three choices are possible: return it to the publisher which is what happened to me, shred it (I believe there is a shredding fee), or sell it to a company that remarkets used books. If it is sold to a remarketer, which means that your book ends up competing against your other new books on Amazon at a dramatically reduced price, or it gets sold to a bookstore to be displayed in the bargain book section. You would earn a little bit on remarketed books, but is it worth it?

Another option is to mark the book as non-returnable which means that once sold, the retailer is stuck with it. Sounds attractive, but that is not the way that the bookstore industry normally works. Most bookstores are struggling in today's economy as witnessed by the closing of Border's bookstores last year. They have a huge overhead in their payroll, building costs, and inventory. As a consequence, many bookstores are looking for 55% of the retail cost of each book to offset their expense stream.

I think it was in 2011, or maybe it was in 2010, where a major Christian bookstore chain decided to return all the books that were not moving quickly from their shelves. That meant that after their inventory was conducted across several hundred bookstores, boxes and boxes of books were returned to the publisher, shredded, or sold as used books by a remarketer. Bookstores typically look at a two-year window for most books, after which they are removed from the shelf and replaced with new titles that might stir the consumer's heart. In this case, that process was greatly accelerated.

As an independent self-publisher, I have to really ask myself, "Do I want to play that game?" Can I really afford to have boxes of books that I once thought were great sales now returned to me?

My solution, for now anyhow, is to mark all of my books returnable to me, but set the title to have a very low discount rate. My printer allows a 20% discount rate which means bookstores won't touch my books unless they are special orders. The question each Christian publisher must as is, "If God is really in this, what is the best marketing strategy that will exalt His name?"

For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Keep Strong in Your Faith in the Lord as We Enter the Times Ahead

An email I recently received stated at its conclusion, "Keep strong in our faith in the Lord as we enter the times ahead." There seems to be so much truth in that brief statement.

The calendar year, as we know it from January 1 to December 31, is man's calendar, not God's. Man's calendar has a beginning and an end, but God's calendar is one of cycles (winter, spring, summer, fall) with neither a beginning nor an end. Under the old covenant, God gave the Israelites a calendar that began with what is now called Rosh Hashanah. In fact, January 1st is not an official holiday in Israel although many treat it as such.

To those of us that understand the end-times scenario, we see God's cyclical calendar taking a new form as described in the book of Revelations. The beginning, if you want to think of our current age, began at the tomb site in Jerusalem. The end of this age is approaching, and seems to be approaching rapidly.

FEMA, that is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, maintains a public record of severe disasters from 1953 to 2011, identifying 2011 as the highest total over that period. By looking at the list for 2011, it shows hundreds of major disaster, emergency, and fire management assistance declarations: floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, severe winter storms, straight-line winds, wildfires, etc. FEMA ran out of money in 2011, indicating the extent of this year's tragedies.

Outside United States, there were horrific tsunami, earthquake, volcanic and other disasters in 2011, including the event that nearly led to the collapse of four nuclear power plants in Japan. Major flooding in Thailand was just one of the many 'natural' events this year.

Socially, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was to many an unexpected uprising, as was the Arab Spring movement. Both movements hope to overturn the existing status quo governments, and to some extent they are having their degree of success.

Christine Darg, in her excellent book from 2007 entitled Miracles Among Muslims, wrote about large numbers of Islamic believers being converted to Christianity. She describes how dreams and healings are playing an important part in convincing muslim believers that Christ is still alive! This pattern of an end-times harvest has continued through 2011. With all of these events, the world both physically and spiritually is shaking. Will this next year be even more significant? Will the end as described in the book of Revelation take a new form? We certainly seem to be pointed in that direction. I don't know any more than you, but it certainly seems appropriate to follow the advice given by my friend, "Keep strong in our faith in the Lord as we enter the times ahead."