Yes, I finally put TDX2 (too dull to die) online as a free ebook, at Smashwords...
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/273975
Had 7 downloads within the 1st hour, so at least 7 people had a look. If you downloaded it and there was no cover picture, download it again, it has one now :-) Smashwords didn't accept my first cover, so I had to resize it, took a little time.
The 3 books are also available very cheap in Kindle format, $0.99 on Amazon.com and £1.02 on Amazon.co.uk.
My 2nd interview is still there, as is my 1st inteview.
Still 'thinking' about the 4th book, it's getting there, becoming a mass of words in my mind, a search for...:-)
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
INTERVIEW! - my 2nd interview online :-)
Well, yes, somehow through all this twittering, I got myself on an 'author promotional drive', and I've finally got another interview online!
See it here at epublishabook.com live...
It's a little witty, if I may say so myself, but TRUE. The truth has a certain absurdity.
See it here at epublishabook.com live...
It's a little witty, if I may say so myself, but TRUE. The truth has a certain absurdity.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Amazon reviews...bogus or real?
Something is wrong with Amazon reviews. Loads of books have tons of 5* reviews, but once you read a few pages, you can see that this just isn't possible, the writing or the story or both are bad (not naming any names).
Are they bogus reviews or real? I thought reviews were meant to help someone decide which book was for them. Apparently not. How naive I am.
So, just what is the point of 'bogus' Amazon reviews? Sure, your friends want to do good by you, but it looks like 5* reviews depend on your social circle who...
1. have enough money to buy a book from Amazon;
2. are willing to express how great your book is, even though after reading only 1 page, you can see there are problems with it.
Now, when I look at a book's reviews, I check the lower star reviews as well as the 5 stars, especially the 1 star, they're sometimes funny, you take them with a pinch of salt. I'll probably get my fair share of them - I hope not, as I feel I wouldn't deserve them, but hey, out of the hundreds of comments on all those author sites, there were 1 or 2 who had something bad to say. All I know is my writing isn't as bad as a lot of those books out there, even those with 64 5 star reviews!
I have a small social circle, relatively I know, but those who felt they needed to say something, have. And I'm still bugging the rest of them to read my books and give a review :-) Everyone is busy...
Oh right, so, what is the point of 'bogus' 5* Amazon reviews? Sales. They sell your book. It's as simple as that. Some people buy reviews, others ask their friends (as I mentioned). Of course, authors would deny all knowledge of this - they want to sell their books. It's a business, a cut-throat business.
If I had any money, would I do it too? What is the point?
Are they bogus reviews or real? I thought reviews were meant to help someone decide which book was for them. Apparently not. How naive I am.
So, just what is the point of 'bogus' Amazon reviews? Sure, your friends want to do good by you, but it looks like 5* reviews depend on your social circle who...
1. have enough money to buy a book from Amazon;
2. are willing to express how great your book is, even though after reading only 1 page, you can see there are problems with it.
Now, when I look at a book's reviews, I check the lower star reviews as well as the 5 stars, especially the 1 star, they're sometimes funny, you take them with a pinch of salt. I'll probably get my fair share of them - I hope not, as I feel I wouldn't deserve them, but hey, out of the hundreds of comments on all those author sites, there were 1 or 2 who had something bad to say. All I know is my writing isn't as bad as a lot of those books out there, even those with 64 5 star reviews!
I have a small social circle, relatively I know, but those who felt they needed to say something, have. And I'm still bugging the rest of them to read my books and give a review :-) Everyone is busy...
Oh right, so, what is the point of 'bogus' 5* Amazon reviews? Sales. They sell your book. It's as simple as that. Some people buy reviews, others ask their friends (as I mentioned). Of course, authors would deny all knowledge of this - they want to sell their books. It's a business, a cut-throat business.
If I had any money, would I do it too? What is the point?
Saturday, January 5, 2013
A Sale! Let's have a party!
Yes, finally got a Kindle sale of 'Rage of Atlantis' (rank #183,280 in the Kindle store) yesterday from a fellow author on Twitter, Melodie Ramone. Visit her blog and find out about her book 'After Forever Ends', which is quite high in the ranks (#37,229) ...my other 2 books are still well over 1 million somewhere. Well, I didn't make any money, but now another person will read my 3rd book - hopefully. I'm actually a little stressed as to what she'll say about it, she mentioned she'd review it!
A NEW interview is coming too! On January the 8th. Nothing special, but only my 2nd so far! This one is about marketing my 3rd book. Will post the address up on that day...
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Is 'self-published' a dirty word? No.
I came across this wonderful circle of interviews of indie authors by other indie authors, and there was a question 'Self-published or published?' One indie author said she was published by a small publisher. I decided to track down this publisher and see if I could submit my work. After a few moments, I found out that...
1. there was no sole publisher with that name;
2. that name was connected to a publishing business, a printing house.
In the old days they called it 'vanity publishing'. I can only assume that someone 'ordered' copies to be made from that printing house and gave them as a 'gift'. So, no small publisher to submit my work to...:-(
But hey, isn't this way self-publishing? So this author wasn't 'published', she was 'self-published'. Is 'self-published' such a dirty word?
Look at the list of names from wiki of authors who self-published...
Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, John Ruskin, Marcel Proust, Martin Luther, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jane Austen, Derek Walcott, William Blake, William Morris, James Joyce, Benjamin Franklin, Anthony Hope, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau, Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, Zane Grey, Mark Twain, and Ernest Vincent Wright.
Ebook self-publishers include J. K. Rowling (yes, really!), Ian Fleming, Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cookson, Adam Croft, Stephen Leather, Deepak Chopra, and Pat Ingoldsby.
WHAT A LIST!!!!
1. there was no sole publisher with that name;
2. that name was connected to a publishing business, a printing house.
In the old days they called it 'vanity publishing'. I can only assume that someone 'ordered' copies to be made from that printing house and gave them as a 'gift'. So, no small publisher to submit my work to...:-(
But hey, isn't this way self-publishing? So this author wasn't 'published', she was 'self-published'. Is 'self-published' such a dirty word?
Look at the list of names from wiki of authors who self-published...
Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, John Ruskin, Marcel Proust, Martin Luther, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jane Austen, Derek Walcott, William Blake, William Morris, James Joyce, Benjamin Franklin, Anthony Hope, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau, Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, Zane Grey, Mark Twain, and Ernest Vincent Wright.
Ebook self-publishers include J. K. Rowling (yes, really!), Ian Fleming, Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cookson, Adam Croft, Stephen Leather, Deepak Chopra, and Pat Ingoldsby.
WHAT A LIST!!!!
569 pages? You're crazy, Orion!
I got a book for Christmas. William Napier 'Attila the Judgement'.
It's a 3rd person POV (point of view) Historical fiction about the Romans and Atilla the Hun. It's strange, it doesn't know where it's going in terms of style, it keeps changing from one paragraph to the next, you get a really nice flowing paragraph and it ends in a stinky sentence which is way out of style. The dialogue to cliche too, then rude, then so unreal.
The story is good, though there are too many coincidences for it to work right. And the story kinda loses strength after Part One. Plus at one point one Roman called Knuckles struggles to kill one single Hun, then suddenly he can kill hundreds with his bare hands and club, crushing skulls, etc. Just like a Hollywood blockbuster. So what is this book? Who knows?
Head jumping happens a bit, too, even more irritating than when I do it. At least when I do it, there's a break of some sort.
AND on page 181, suddenly from out of the blue comes a 1st person POV (point of view). Where did that come from? It continues on for I don't know how long, I stopped on page 183..of 569 pages?!
Do I read on? Only because I can't find my 'Catcher in the Rye' at the moment...
I can't believe this book got a publisher. Who is it? Orion! Jesus! Someone in their office has a screw loose. Congratulations to William Napier, though, he got a 3 book deal from them! Which is more than what I could...
It's a 3rd person POV (point of view) Historical fiction about the Romans and Atilla the Hun. It's strange, it doesn't know where it's going in terms of style, it keeps changing from one paragraph to the next, you get a really nice flowing paragraph and it ends in a stinky sentence which is way out of style. The dialogue to cliche too, then rude, then so unreal.
The story is good, though there are too many coincidences for it to work right. And the story kinda loses strength after Part One. Plus at one point one Roman called Knuckles struggles to kill one single Hun, then suddenly he can kill hundreds with his bare hands and club, crushing skulls, etc. Just like a Hollywood blockbuster. So what is this book? Who knows?
Head jumping happens a bit, too, even more irritating than when I do it. At least when I do it, there's a break of some sort.
AND on page 181, suddenly from out of the blue comes a 1st person POV (point of view). Where did that come from? It continues on for I don't know how long, I stopped on page 183..of 569 pages?!
Do I read on? Only because I can't find my 'Catcher in the Rye' at the moment...
I can't believe this book got a publisher. Who is it? Orion! Jesus! Someone in their office has a screw loose. Congratulations to William Napier, though, he got a 3 book deal from them! Which is more than what I could...
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Researching the 4th book
Researching a new book is just one of those wonderful things in the journey of creating. Sorry? What?
Yes, researching, going round in circles, trying to find the answers to the questions which will be the skeleton to the logic of your book, I like it. Well, I would. Got a hell of a lot of it done in the last few days, pieces are falling into place in my mind, scenes are appearing, coming to life...
Those French are crazy when it comes to numbers. They count up to 60 and then stop. 70 is actually 60+10, 80 is 4*20, and 99 is 4*20+19 (quatre-vingt-dix-neuf)! 100 is finally a new number (cent). Crazy. Just wondering how to put it in...great fun!
Yes, researching, going round in circles, trying to find the answers to the questions which will be the skeleton to the logic of your book, I like it. Well, I would. Got a hell of a lot of it done in the last few days, pieces are falling into place in my mind, scenes are appearing, coming to life...
Those French are crazy when it comes to numbers. They count up to 60 and then stop. 70 is actually 60+10, 80 is 4*20, and 99 is 4*20+19 (quatre-vingt-dix-neuf)! 100 is finally a new number (cent). Crazy. Just wondering how to put it in...great fun!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)