Pumpkin Carvings

Well, it’s getting to that time of year again. In fact, today I got the first order of the season for my e-book, Mastering the Art of Pumpkin Carving. I published this e-book last September, but didn’t get many orders. This year, I’m hoping that the book will be indexed in the search engines well enough that people who are looking for a book like this will find it (and purchase it!).

Did you realize that my first attempt at more advanced pumpkin carving was six years ago? I first became interested in the art of pumpkin carving in 1999 when I carved a "Boo-Kitty" jack-o-lantern. Since then, I’ve carved numerous pumpkins, with patterns such as Winnie the Pooh, Sylvester and Tweety, a buck deer, Garfield, and more. Suzanne, Christina, Jeff, and Jeremiah also joined in the fun. It takes time and patience for each carving, but it is worth it to see the end product.

When I began posting pictures of our pumpkin carvings online, I noticed that our web site hits went way up in October. In fact, a couple years ago we had something like 18,000 visitors in the month of October! I think the visitors to our site have declined now, since there are a lot more pumpkin carving web sites on the web now than there used to be, but I still see an increase in hits each October.

Anyway, last September I decided to try my hand at writing and marketing a pumpkin carving e-book, with the hope of being able to sell it online via our web site. I was sure that some of the visitors looking at our carvings would be interested in a book with detailed instructions and patterns for pumpkin carving. So, I began to work on the e-book.

First, I picked a pumpkin out of our garden and carved a Mickey Mouse pattern onto it, taking detailed photos of each step. Next, I incorporated these photos, with text, into a 21 page e-book which gives detailed instructions on how to carve both a traditional jack-o-lantern as well as an advanced shaded jack-o-lantern. The purpose of the e-book is to show how easy and inexpensive it is to create professional pumpkin carvings. I also included information about pumpkin portraits, where to obtain cheap/free tools and patterns, techniques of jack-o-lantern photography, free patterns, and pumpkin recipes (including how to roast the seeds).

Next, I converted the e-book to PDF format, and set up a payment gateway through PayPal. Everything looked great. I hope that many people will find my first attempt at writing a book to be helpful and beneficial.

To see pictures of my family’s pumpkin carvings, click here. Check back soon to see this year’s carvings.