Apparently, even someone who claims he isn’t a writer can get writer’s block and I was stymied for a post topic. Nothing on my short list of post ideas was sparking inspiration, so I threw it out to a group of friends for suggestions. One proposed I write about “violence in books.”
Recent events in the US brought out the normal contingent of “experts,” blaming real violence on pretend violence in movies and video games. Although seldom mentioned, should books get a free ride? Was this idea a trap? An attempt to get me to go political at Indies Unlimited, which seemed like the second quickest way to get The Evil Mastermind to return the post with the message, “Nah, I don’t think so.” (The quickest way is saying BigAl’s favorite word deleted by EM.) Continue reading “Bang, Bang – You’re Not Dead”
This time last year I was flailing around, trying everything I could think of to find readers for my newly self-published novel. I did the usual Facebook events and .99 cent sales and joined every online group I could find. I was active in Amazon Author Discussion boards, Kindleboards, Yahoo groups, and anywhere else I thought readers might be. The reviews I was receiving on the book were really positive but I couldn’t reach that next level in terms of finding more readers. My background is sales and marketing and I know my way around the internet, but even with all my efforts I couldn’t hit the big numbers that other Indie authors were achieving. In the first six weeks I sold about two hundred books but I knew many of those were friends and family, and other authors who were kind enough to buy it and support me. I was happy to get my work out there but I wanted to find random readers who didn’t know me, and when I checked the Kindleboard monthly listings and saw there were Indie authors selling thousands of ebooks a month I knew that either I had a book that wasn’t going to sell or I was doing something wrong. So, I contacted Robert Bidinotto, and that’s when I learned about “paying it forward”. 
2012 is over and thank goodness—not exactly a prosperous year for many of us. For Christmas this year, I gave the grand-kids a couple of plastic scoops and told them the cat’s litter box was a buried treasure game. Not only were they disappointed, but it looks like I wasted a lot of time making the cat swallow all those nickels. Sigh.