How to make big money with your book

I’ve found the answer to how to make big money off your book. When I read about it, I said to myself it’s so simple why didn’t I think of that? The story was in the London Telegraph last week. Taschen America, the U.S. affiliate of Taschen GmbH in Germany, has a new book out titled MoonFire, the Epic Journey of Apollo 11 that sells for a mere $1,000 per copy.

You wouldn’t need to sell a bunch to make a down payment on a nice repossessed mansion. Tell your friends if they want one, they’d better not tarry. The publisher is only printing 1969 (that’s the year of the moon landing). But the coup de grace lies in the last 12 copies. All the books are numbered, of course, and numbers 1958 through 1969 are described with this note:

“Each copy comes with a unique specimen of lunar rock, ranging in weight from a slice of the moon at 0.4 grams to 30.34 grams, one of the largest lunar meteorites ever found on Earth.”

These will cost an astronomical figure (pun intended) that hasn’t been revealed. According to the Telegraph story, "It will be thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars," Creed Poulson, the firm's public relations manager, told The Times.

The book itself, including the “cheaper” version, includes Norman Mailer’s three-part Life magazine depiction of the Apollo 11 mission, along with numerous photos from Life and NASA. The boxed edition comes with a Plexiglas-framed copy of the cover photo showing Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon. It is signed by the retired astronaut, who recently suggested NASA skip planning another moon trip and head on to Mars.

Okay, you ask, how do you relate all this to your own situation? Good question. As those of you familiar with The Surest Poison (April 2009, Night Shadows Press) know, the book involves the toxic effects of an illegal dump of trichloroethylene behind a small plant outside Ashland City, Tennessee. I plan to create a limited commemorative edition that will come with a small vial of the chemical, better known as TCE, which you can place on the bookshelf or pour in your water supply to see what happens.

The numbered volume will include retired corporate attorney Ben Small’s exciting description of TCE cases he’s been involved in, and real-life Private Investigator Norma Mott Tillman’s breath-taking story of the actual TCE-dumping case that inspired my book. And I’m not greedy. It’ll sell for a mere $500. I can print 2009 (the year of publication), though, so the total will be a tidy $1,004,500. The printing and boxing cost should run somewhat less than that, so I’ll make out okay.

Don’t worry, I’ll give you plenty of advance notice on when to order your copy. Meanwhile, if you haven’t read the original book, that’s your first assignment.

Deciding how to commit murder

Early in the process of writing my last Greg McKenzie mystery, I decided on the title The Marathon Murders. At the time, I had no idea how many murders would occur or who all the victims would be. Since the story revolved around a man missing in 1914, I knew the identity of the first victim, but not how he died.

In his blog awhile back at Murderous Musings, Ben Small wrote “Bump ‘Em Off, Eh?” and mentioned several methods of dispatching people who needed killing. I wound up using different methods for each murder in the Marathon book but didn’t consciously plan it that way.

As a “seat of the pants” plotter, I let the story develop as I write. The characters move the plot as they do their own thing.

I didn’t get very far into the Marathon story until somebody was pulling a body out of a lake. Hmm, I thought. How did he die? At first it looked like a blow to the head. To be sure, I turned to the mystery writer’s favorite medical forensic guru, Dr. D. P. (Doug) Lyle. I emailed him with the situation my characters found and asked a few questions. He sent an answer and referred me to his website for more elaboration. All things considered, it turned out the guy had drowned.

Two more murders occurred in the book before Greg and Jill McKenzie could lay the case to rest, but based on the circumstances, they were pretty straightforward.

One of my blogging colleagues mentioned a book on poisons that provides plenty of fodder for writers trying to decide how to kill. I bought two of Dr. Lyle’s books, Forensics for Dummies and Murder and Mayhem. The latter is subtitled “A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers.” It is organized under three main headings: Doctors, Hospitals, Illnesses, and Injuries; Methods of Murder and Mayhem; and Tracking the Perp.

The good doctor has revised his website since I last visited. Now www.dplylemd.com has a section called The Writers Forensic Community where questions from authors and Doug Lyle’s answers are archived. He also has a section with articles of interest to writers written by himself and Lee Lofland, a former cop who has a blog called The Graveyard Shift that is a goldmine of police info.

The goal of all this, of course, is to make our fictional murders sound authentic. As Dr. Lyle says in one of his articles, “To write a good mystery that will keep the reader guessing to the end, you must plot the nearly perfect murder.” Deciding what makes it nearly perfect is the writer’s number one task.