Reinvesting Author Royalties In The Books That Earned Them: History Articles

Since new covers added sales to my travel photo books (and then to my tech illiterate books), I decided to finish out my non-fiction book re-branding by having the covers for my history articles redone. I kept the original images and handed them over to Elizabeth Mackey (again) for more professional looking covers. Here are the six new book covers (and they're linked to their Amazon pages):



Constantine: The Emperor of Tolerance

Constantine has now sold over 200 copies if you combine sales from all formats. I considered buying a new image but ultimately decided that it sold pretty well as it was, so all I really needed was a better looking title and a more uniform location for my author name (you'll notice my author name is now in the same location and font on all of my non-fiction titles.) I decided to follow suit with all of my history articles.

Caribbean Piracy: Pirates and Privateers

Caribbean Piracy just broke into triple digit sales not that long ago, becoming my second history article to sell more than 100 copies. I still really like this image. It features a monkey mask I got in Hawaii, a shark-tooth dagger I got at the Polynesian cultural center, and a dagger I had made in the Philippines. The monkey mask was brightened up a bit for the current version of the cover.

The Mormon Theocracy

The Mormon Theocracy is unique among my history articles. It has no subtitle and it actually contains two history articles instead of one (one on the early Mormon theocracy in Utah and a second article on Gregory Palamas, the Orthodox monk, and his thoughts on God.) Since it was hit by a 1 star review from someone who never read it, it has recovered to become my most reviewed history article and has had a decent number of sales this year.

Luther Standing Bear: Assimilation

Luther Standing Bear features an Igorot shield and spear that I purchased in Maharlika (in Baguio when I was last in the Philippines.) I wanted it badly enough that I didn't negotiate very aggressively for it but it also slightly hurt my negotiating stance that I could only find it in one shop. This article received it's first five star review this year and has sold the second most paperbacks of any of my history articles for 2014 (the award for most paperbacks sold this year goes to Constantine as of right now.)

Prayer: Archangels and Intercessory Beings

Prayer was hit by a one star review at the same time The Mormon Theocracy was (by the same crazy lady who never bothered to read it.) I made it free for a while to get some more reviews and it currently has a 3 star rating overall with 6 reviews. The praying Mary and Joseph carvings are a part of a nativity set I purchased in Baguio. Now that it's back at an average rating, I've set it to eventually go back to it's original price. I'm not sure when exactly that will happen.

Gateway to the Vikings: L'Anse aux Meadows

After some decent sales in 2013, my article on the Vikings who explored North America was hit with a two star review. It's currently set to free through all major e-book retailers. Vikings has actually done better via Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Apple as a freebie than it has through Amazon (which is unusual.) It still only has the one two star review on Amazon, claiming that this article doesn't tell you where L'Anse aux Meadows is and that all of the info in it is available for free. He's right about his first point (I assume people know how to use Google) but way off on his second point. Many of the articles I referenced in this article are only available via JSTOR (a paid subscription site for history articles.) If you're looking for an interesting read and grab this one as a freebie, please consider leaving a review if you learn from it or enjoy it.

I've also gone to a more uniform pricing format for my history articles. Making $0.70 per copy sold wasn't working very well and Amazon's new price analysis tool recommended that I change the price to $2.99 on all of my articles based on data collected from other non-fiction titles similar to mine (Constantine was already at that price and outselling all of the others.) I went with their data and moved the price to $2.99 on all of them except for Vikings, which is currently free. I still don't know what I'm going to do with the five article collection, so I've let it keep it's original cover for now and stay at a $4.99 price point until I figure out what to do with it.

Vikings and North America: L'Anse aux Meadows

To give you an update on Jehovah and Hades, I just barely started chapter 3. Work and school leave little time to do much else. I also don't yet have an update as far as the cover art goes EDIT: Cover Art has been completed. Thanks for everyone's interest in Jehovah and Hades 1/27/12






 



What I feel like talking about today doesn't relate to Jehovah and Hades. Well it kind of relates to Hades. Something mentioned in my European Expansion class got me thinking about Vikings again. I took a Scandinavian History class a few years back and had to write a paper on... well maybe a little backstory first. In my European Expansion class, we were talking about Norse explorers and the effect Viking explorations, pillages, and settlements had on the world before the time period we generally discuss in the class. He brought up the one Viking settlement found in North America back in the 1960s called L'Anse aux Meadows. That's what I wrote a paper on back in Scandinavian history. He went over a brief explanation of the Viking sagas (Erik's saga and I forget what the other one is called) and I was surprised how little most of the people in the class knew about the Vikings. I know... that's not really fair. I took a class on Viking history and most of them probably hadn't. So before I launch into L'Anse aux Meadows, here's some cool Viking stuff off the top of my head gathered from various history classes I've taken at BYU:

Areas Vikings raided / pillaged / settled / influenced:

-England (way early in its history there was a king over England named Canute or Knud)
-Normandy
-Russia (the name Russia derives from the word Rus which means red, or the color of the Viking's hair)
-Scandinavia
-Byzantine Empire (the Varangians (a Viking tribe) were actually the Byzantine emperor's personal bodyguard)
-Greenland (settled by Erik the Red who had to flee after killing a fellow Norseman after a dispute about a borrowed item)
-Iceland
-Newfoundland
-L'Anse aux Meadows (a confirmed Viking settlement in Canada)
-some parts of North America (which follows from their settlement of L'Anse aux Meadows, but I don't know of any other confirmed Viking sites in North America - generally thought to be associated with Leif Erikson)

So there you go. They had a pretty big effect on the world. I'm pretty sure I even missed a couple places. Anyways, I found the old paper on L'Anse aux Meadows I wrote. I'll go ahead and post it for fun:

Copyright © 2011 by Randall J. Morris
All rights reserved. This essay or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or book reviews.

“L’Anse aux Meadows – is it the gate to the Viking Vinland settlements?”

          L’Anse aux Meadows is the only known Viking settlement in North America. It was discovered in 1960 by a Norwegian explorer, Helge Ingstad, and his wife Anne. They were led there by George Decker who was the first to notice “overgrown bumps and ridges that looked as if they might be building remains.”[i] Helge and Anne excavated the site from 1960 to 1968 and found many artifacts believed to be closely related to Iceland and Greenland, the home of the Vikings.[ii] Among their findings were large iron boat nails or rivets, stone oil lamps, ring-headed pins used to fasten Norse cloaks, small spindle whorls from a handheld spindle, a small whetstone, and scissors. The site is dated to approximately 1,000 years ago, about the time Leif Ericson is said to have established settlements in “Vinland” or North America. The Ingstads were able to excavate a total of eight buildings, some of which were used for dwellings and others for daily work. The artifacts found in each building were able to identify whether the structure was a house or a workshop. The group of buildings included “an iron smithy containing a forge and iron slag, a carpentry workshop which generated wood debris, and a specialized boat repair area containing worn rivets.”[iii] Did they discover the missing port to Vinland or simply a Norse settlement that is totally detached from the Vikings and the Vinland founded in the Icelandic sagas?

Evidence shows that L’Anse aux Meadows shared many elements with Norse villages in Greenland and Iceland from around the same time period and it is speculated that it could have been a part of Ericson’s Vinland because of the time period that Leif Ericson was said to have been in America (according to the sagas). Some archaeologists believe, however, that L’Anse aux Meadows isn’t the Vinland from the sagas, but “an exploration base and winter camp for expeditions heading farther south to the real Vinland, which may have extended to the St. Lawrence River and New Brunswick.”[iv] Food plays a large role in this speculation. For instance, Vinland was so named because of the prevalence of wild grapes that supposedly grew there and wild grapes are not found in the vicinity of L’Anse aux Meadows. Food remains uncovered at the excavation site included butternuts which “do not grow naturally north of New Brunswick and their presence probably indicates that the Norse inhabitants travelled farther south where they obtained the nuts.”[v]

Although L’Anse aux Meadows doesn’t contain the wild grapes for which Vinland was named, it can be argued that “Vinland was a country, not a place - this site would have marked the entrance to Vinland, which probably extended to the St. Lawrence River and New Brunswick.”[vi] The latest research in L’Anse aux Meadows shows that it was primarily a boat repair facility where boats could be mended and made ready for the journey back to Greenland. As such, it played a vital role for the Vinland settlement because it provided the only possible link back to the Viking homeland. L’Anse aux Meadows seems to be a site inhabited mostly during the winter. Enough people stayed there to gather food to last throughout the winter which allowed more time to explore Vinland and made a return trip to Greenland to gather supplies unnecessary.

The largest problem with identifying the exact location of Vinland is that the only documents that describe it are the “sagas” which were passed down orally until copied by scribes. Of those written copies, none of the originals remain so we are left with copies of copies of orally handed down stories. Since the sagas have been filtered over and over through retelling and recopying, it is hard to know exact details from the original recounting of a voyage. Who knows how many details were added or subtracted to the account to make it more interesting, sound better, flow more fluidly, or simply by mistake? To add to the confusion, all the sagas basically are derived from two Icelandic sagas (the oldest remaining copies) which “contradict each other on basic issues and internally are vague and contain nonhistorical passages.”[vii] Due to this fact, many Vinland locations have been proposed but none have been validated by Norse artifacts, with the exception of L’Anse aux Meadows. Even though the Icelandic sagas may not be the most reliable of sources, it is still admitted by most scholars that the artifacts found at L’Anse aux Meadows prove that Norsemen did come to America and establish settlements, even if those settlements were only used for a brief time.

The rest of this article is available via Amazon as an e-book.

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[i] Parks Canada, “Discovery of the Site and Initial Excavations (1960-1968)”, L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada, 9 December 2008, Available from http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/natcul/decouverte_discovery_e.asp. Accessed 19 March 2009.

[ii] “L’Anse aux Meadows: Ancient Viking settlement”, 2002 , Available from http://www.essortment.com/all/lanseauxmeado_rvvi.htm, Accessed 19 March 2009.

[iii] “L’Anse aux Meadows”, 26 March 2009, Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Anse_Aux_Meadows, Accessed 19 March 2009.

[iv] Ibid., Accessed 20 March 2009.

[v] Ibid., Accessed 20 March 2009.

[vi] Parks Canada, “Is L’Anse Aux Meadows Vinland?”, L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada, 9 December 2008, Available from http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/natcul/vinland_e.asp. Accessed 23 March 2009.

[vii] Douglas R. McManis, “The Traditions of Vinland,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59 (December 1969): pp. 797-814.

[viii] M.L. Fernald, “The Natural History of Ancient Vinland and its Geographical Significance,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 47 (1915): No. 9 pp. 686-687.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Robert McGhee, “Contact between Native North Americans and the Medieval Norse: A Review of the Evidence,” American Antiquity 49 (January 1984): No. 1 pp. 4-26.

[xv] E.A. Williamsen, “Boundaries of Differences in the Vinland Sagas,” Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005): Iss. 4 pp. 451-478.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Iver A. Langmowen, “The Norse Discovery of America,” Neurosurgery online 57 (2005): Iss. 6 pp. 1076-1086.

[xxiii] M.L. Fernald, “The Natural History of Ancient Vinland and its Geographical Significance,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 47 (1915): No. 9 pp. 686-687.

[xxiv] “Viking”, 25 March 2009, Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking, Accessed 1 April 2009.