Since you already know how captivating Just Another Square Dance Caller is, here’s your chance to share that experience with a friend! I have a limited surplus of Marshall Flippo’s authorized biography, and I’m offering the first 10 buyers an exclusive deal:
✓ 25% OFF both hardback and paperback editions ✓ FREE SWAG included with your order ✓ Perfect gift for square dance enthusiasts, music lovers, or anyone who appreciates American folk traditions
So what are your choices for the FREE SWAG?
Whether it’s for a dance partner, family member, or friend who’d appreciate Marshall’s incredible journey, this is your opportunity to spread the story at a significant discount.
Limited to first 10 orders only. Easy payment through PayPal or Square.
Can a legend be forgotten in five years? Can a square dance legend’s name be erased from the memory of dancers? Only if we let that happen, and I will not let it happen as long as I can sit at a computer and type!
What attributes identified this legend, Marshall Flippo to me?
A Larger Legend than Square Dancing
For one thing, when we met face-to-face the first time in Tucson, Arizona on October 27, 2017, Flippo spoke of his family then immediately told me about quitting school his senior year and joining the Navy at seventeen. His Navy career spanned four years in the South Pacific. After hearing his vivid description about the end of the war and all his experiences, I realized he had given the reader in this book a sizable birds’ eye view of what happened.
Texan Twang
Because I knew him later in life, his raspy Texan twang identified Flippo to me. When I wrote the book, I tried to capture his language for the reader because it certainly added a flair to the telling. Listening to his earlier recordings, Flippo had a clear, identifiable voice.
Sense of Humor
Often at a dance when we visited him, I enjoyed his outlandish sense of humor. In fact, when I was writing his biography, I can’t tell you how many people told me their favorite “Flippo Story,” and often it included humor.
While researching his biography, we only met face-to-face twice. I had forty hours of recorded interviews with Flippo. Often “our date” was on Tuesday at 1:00 PM. Lin, my husband, has said he knew I was talking to Flippo because of the laughter.
In fact, he wanted to start his book with a variety of different pieces. We finalized on a tribute to those who had helped him get started with his calling—and then his dirty joke a caller’s wife told him. When he shared it with me, Flippo chuckled and said, “Now you clean it up so we can add to the book.” So, I did!
This Legend Loved After Parties
If you attended any After Party at a dance festival where Flippo called, you experienced another demonstration of his sense of humor—hilarious skits! He loved to take on a persona and play it up to the max! You can see it in the following pictures:
Looking back over his many recordings, his amazing choreography and calling entertained thousands of dancers. When I was writing the book, I shared a chapter with my writing group one Monday. Marty, an astute writer asked, “Does Flippo do his own choreography?”
Shocked, I sat for a moment and replied, “I have no idea.” Flip (a nickname for him) and I had our weekly interview date on Tuesday, so I asked him the next day. This opened up a gigantic discussion, and he told me how he choreographed “The Auctioneer,” his premiere hit. He spoke with enthusiasm and joy! It was quite a feat—want to know how he did it? His choreography became a whole chapter, Chapter 20—Flippo’s Choreography.
After all his involvement in CALLERLAB, he received six awards for his calling and participation in this organization he helped start!
So, have you forgotten him? Has this legend died in your area? Your square dance club?
Released the book in 2020—the PandemicHit
Before the pandemic, I had lots of pre-orders for the book, Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo, but square dancing stopped in 2020. Festivals were canceled—places I planned on selling his book—Indio, California. CALLERLAB convention canceled
In 2021, specifically, I thought our festival in Albuquerque, Hot August Nights, was a go, so I loaded up on both formats—hardbacks and paperbacks. BUT IT WAS CANCELED! So, I ended up with surplus inventory!
A Legend Forgotten – 2023
In 2023, I went to the CALLERLAB convention in Reno, Nevada to sell his biography. I can’t tell you how many younger callers when asked if they knew Flippo, said, “No, who was he?”
Because Darryl Lipscomb helped at a booth next to mine, he retold a sad conversation with Flippo after he retired. Flippo told Darryl that once he retired, dancers and callers would forget him in a short time, three or four years. He retired in 2016. By 2023, it had happened. Therefore, I sold very few books there, so disappointing!
A Legend Still Forgotten – 2024
Being the eternal optimist, I returned to the CALLERLAB convention in Dallas, Texas the next year. Okay, Texas was Flippo’s home state, so come on—wouldn’t he still be known. Yes, more people knew him there, but still a vast majority had no interest in him, his book or the history this book chronicles.
What About 2024 and 2025?
Sadly, I have put out several major sales on his book over the last two years, and the response has been stunning—no sales! Some people buy his book on Amazon, but I’m talking about the copies I have.
So, here I am continuing to honor Flippo. When we started this project, he had one major request, “Don’t make me a hero!” This humble stance is exactly who he was! He never saw his position in the square dance world of mentoring many of our fine callers today. When the CALLERLAB began, Flippo was one of the original eleven, and he repeatedly supported the organization his whole career. Also, he began calling in the heyday of square dancing and continued into his late 80s, moving from live music, to recorded music to using a computer! So, this biography stands as a history book, too.
Finally,
If you haven’t bought a hardback or paperback copy of his biography, now is the time. If you already have a copy, how about buying one for a friend. I have a special offer going on right now—
Got a Friend Who’d Love Marshall Flippo’s Story?
If you already know how captivating Just Another Square Dance Caller is, here’s your chance to share that experience! I have a limited surplus of Marshall Flippo’s authorized biography, and I’m offering the first 10 buyers an exclusive deal:
✓ 25% OFF both hardback and paperback editions
✓ FREE SWAG included with your order
✓ Perfect gift for square dance enthusiasts, music lovers, or anyone who appreciates American folk traditions
Whether it’s for a dance partner, family member, or friend who’d appreciate Marshall’s incredible journey, this is your opportunity to spread the story at a significant discount.
Limited to first 10 orders only. Easy payment through PayPal or Square.
Ready to share Marshall’s legacy? [Order now at laradasbooks.com or contact me at larada@laradasbooks.com before these discounted copies are gone!
National Audiobook Month is almost over! See my audiobooks listed below! All are sale this month for your listening pleasure!
Let’s celebrate one year since I released Flippo’s biography!! So much goes into publishing a book! Here’s what I did with Flippo’s. On May 3, 2020, I uploaded three formats of Flippo’s biography to Ingram Sparks’ publishing company. Flippo wanted hardback copies available, so that’s why I selected Ingram to publish his biography. I also published the paperback and Kindle e-book version through KDP on Amazon with the publication date of May 8, 2020. Whew! A year ago, I met myself coming and going for sure!
One year—that’s hard to believe! Because I self-publish, I do all the work to prepare a book to be released: create the cover and the interior. What made this an outrageous task is I had three covers to make: the hardback, paperback and e-book formats. Then I had to format the interior for each also, making sure each version had its own unique ISBN number! I really worried about messing up on that!
COVERS
Hardback Dust Jacket with Template from Ingram Sparks
The hardback version required a dust jacket, which is a much larger space than a paperback cover, so I had to alter it considerably. (See image above.) I battled with the layout, making sure the title stayed on the spine and the text didn’t run over on the folds of the dust cover—tricky for sure!
Previously, I had laid out paperback and e-books covers for my other books, so I had less trouble with these two, and their dimensions were similar, so that helped!
But prior to the actual layout of these, I had to come up with the design. John and Neeca Flippo and I wanted the picture of Flippo calling as a young man with a live band. What a wonderful picture depicting Flippo calling as a young caller! It needed to be the focus point of the cover. Then I searched for the background graphic, and I wanted something that looked like a dance floor and found that.
Then, I experimented with the font and the color of the title, arriving at the one I felt stressed the title and went with the color scheme of the picture and the background. I love all these parts of design work!
Bryan and Kenta Swift helped me with the back cover. I wanted to feature Flippo’s favorite places he called, and they suggested I cluster them around the edges. I first added the four on the top: Asilomar, Kirkwood Lodge, Wagon Wheel, and Chula Vista. Flip had identified those four as his favorites. Then I knew I had to add Japan! He loved his trips to Japan and the Japanese people.
Early in my self-publishing career, advisors encouraged me not to write the book description on the back of the book, so I paid to have someone do that.
INTERIOR OF THE BOOK
For the interior layout, I used an app, Vellum, which is only available for Mac computers, and I love it. That took time too, though, doing the three formats! Then I decided because this was a history book of square dancing and people might be interested in looking for a specific person or places, it needed an Index. I found an app to help index the keywords, but what a grueling experience that was!
UPLOADS
Finally, I was ready to upload the covers and the interiors for each format. Before this book, I’d only used createspace.com which has become KDP, and I knew their upload process. Ingram Sparks was totally different. It required the .pdf documents for the covers and interiors to be in a specific format, PDF/X-1a:2001.
Adobe’s InDesign app is the publisher’s standard and creates that format, but I don’t have it because of its expense. So, I researched every nook and cranny on the Internet and found a solution—I outsourced my covers and interiors to fiverr.com and someone there converted my files.
So, after I successfully uploaded the documents to Ingram Sparks, I uploaded them to KDP, as well. Each of these publishers provided me with a “eproofs” to look over and give my final approval.
After that, the sales poured in from the pre-order list, word-of-mouth and my advertising on the Internet, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, I had a heck of time getting the shipment of books. After several weeks’ delay, I’ll never forget opening the box of hardbacks and holding that precious book in my hands for the first time. I think Flippo would have been proud!
Also, because of the pandemic, CALLERLAB was canceled, and I had planned to release the book there. So, the travel restrictions forced me to have the release party online with Zoom, and we had a fabulous time swopping Flippo stories that night.
With the continued restrictions and no dancing, the sales have dropped off, but I keep Flippo’s biography in front of the dance world on square dance Facebook pages and through emails to possible interested parties.
ONE YEAR LATER
Here we are one year later. I know the sales will spike once we dance again. Also, I’m having a Zoom celebration on May 10, 2020 7:00 PM MST to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Flip’s biography, so join me for a fun-filled night. Go to the Facebook Event page and click you are going or email me at Larada@icloud.com
A year later—so much has happened! Have you ever self-published a book? If so, how did it go?
Have you bought your copy of Flippo’s biography yet? If not, now’s a good time!
(Scroll down a little farther below to make comments!)
~HAVE YOU ORDERED YOUR AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE FLIPPO BIOGRAPHY? AVAILABLE NOW! Go to the homepage on my website & pay for it there: https://www.laradasbooks.com
~One-Year Anniversary of the Release of Flippo’s Biography! Join me to celebrate on May 10, 2021 from 7:00—9:00 PM Email me at larada@icloud.com if you are interested!
~Here’s Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When Its Christmas Time in Texas”:https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A
ALL FOUR E-BOOK FORMATS OF FLIPPO’S BIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW:
