The first two books in the “Johnny Ringo” series and the first two books in the “Crazy Runner” series were self-tests. All four of those books were written starting in May of 2009 and concluding in May of 2010. For the rest of May and June Ralph was mostly tied up with working on the Boy Scout Chess Merit Badge and was not ready to start another book, even though he already had enough storylines for two more books in each series.
By the time he finished the second “Crazy Runner” book, he had several acquaintances that were familiar with what he was doing and requested that he allow them to read them. He did and three of them who enjoy reading books in these genres thought they were good and were very adamant that he try getting them published.
He started by getting a list of all publishers of western books and sending them a query letter about the “Johnny Ringo” series. He only received two responses and both of those basically said they did not deal directly with unpublished authors that he would first have to find a literary agent.
He searched online for literary agents who represented writers of westerns and sent out through snail-mail and e-mail 141 query letters.
Between the letters to publishers and letters to literary agents, he received 88 negative responses and no positive responses.
Several of the negative responses from literary agents suggested that he self-publish a book and if it is successful, then he should contact them.
He looked into self-publishing. The self-publishing companies that sounded like they would do the best job all wanted between $5,000 and $10,000 per book. As a retired school teacher he did not have that amount of money available to spend on a hobby.
He did find one company who agreed to publish a book at no charge to him, but they would not edit it. They further agreed to send one copy to all of the reputable book-selling companies, send him a copy and pay him one dollar. He had to sign a seven year contract. Since he had more ideas generated for the “Johnny Ringo” series at that time and that was really his first writing love, he chose to have them publish the first book in the “Crazy Runner” series for which he became very happy. What he did not catch in the fine print of the contract was that all promotion of the book, after the initial publishing, would either be up to him personally or through them for a fee. By January 2014 only 20 copies had been sold, mostly through Amazon.com. The publishing company did everything they said they would, he was just naïve to believe he could get something for nothing.
Several months later a friend told him he should check out publishing his books as ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle.
He did and found that with his computer background that it was a rather easy process for him to format his books for Kindle readers.
As of September, 2015 all of his books were available to those with Kindle readers and Crazy Runner – Trailblazer: 1750 was the only book available in paperback.
Sales of the books on Kindle began slowly, but in early 2012 sales really started increasing. In 2015 a former student told him about CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, that would allow him to publish each of his books in paperback and ebook. In 2018 Amazon ceased doing business with CreateSpace and was having all publishing done through their Kindle division. Due to using different Cover Creator programs, it made the publishing of a book in both paperback and ebook, very tedious. However, with some trial and error, Ralph figured out how to make the process slightly easier.
All of his books, up to Sands Green - Mountain Man, are what some publishing companies call "Quick Read Fiction", which means they are between 50,000 and 100,000 words and have short chapters. Literary persons call these types of books a "Novella" (short novel), which means they are 150 to 300 pages long.
In October 2015, he bought the rights to Crazy Runner – Trailblazer: 1750 from the original publishing company and the following day had that book on both Kindle and Create Space, so that now all of his books are available on both Kindle readers and paperback.