I had a lot of drunken teenage girls round at my place last night. They're still here in various states of undress and hangover. I wish they'd leave. So I went out shopping to get away from them. I bought four things: cheap tea; peach green tea (not for me though I may sneak some); a loaf of bread and six rolls of toilet paper. Teenage girls use so much toilet paper it's hard to imagine what they do with it.
I also nearly bought a second hand copy of Iain M Bank's Inversions as I haven't read it and I love him. I love his writing and it was only £2, but I still didn't buy it. That has lessons.
As far as I go, my book sales on Amazon continue to trickle out. I am not going to pay my rent this way for some time, but it's gratifying to see that people are buying my words. I even have a handful of good reviews. And I'm only 3 weeks in.
Some days when nothing sells, I feel pretty miserable, then a sale or two clicks in and I'm happy. I think crystal meth must be a bit like this.
I have bought various books since I started my ebook craze.
These were in order of purchase:
How I Sold a Million eBook in 5 Months by John Locke
Two main things jump out at me from this book: the fact he treats selling your stories like a business, and that you have to create your author platform. So here I am; creating my author platform by me and you having this conversation (technically it's a monologue, I know). I was shy of this. I didn't want to spam my friends on Facebook and Twitter with sales pitches. So I've set up a separate blog and twitter account.
Kindle Money Mastery: How I made Six Figures Through Amazon Kindle....This is a get rich quick book. Still I enjoyed reading it as it made me dream of wealth beyond imagination, probably in my hands within a matter of weeks. There was some useful stuff in it but I am wary of get-rich-quick schemes.
From Word to Kindle by Aaron Shepard
The reviews let you know it's a bit dated as Amazon no longer lets you use html in your product description, but it was a useful guide to the perils of formatting.
How to Sell Fiction on Kindle by Michael Alear
I thought this was a pretty useful book. It tells you how to utilise search terms in your book copy. In a sense it is "gaming" the system - still I managed to make my books more visible by changing the text in my description and some other tips he gives. I would say this was worth buying.
Then I got:
Write, Publish, Repeat by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant
I read it and thought my head was going to explode with excitement. Firstly it's not a get rich quick promise book. It tells you that success is going to take work and time and work. In fact I think you have to be a writing machine for it to work, but I can write pretty fast if I'm not distracted by video games. I wrote 2 short stories last night - about 6000 words, while I was drinking wine. At the time I thought my style was vibrant and powerful. I haven't looked at them this morning...
But anyway back to Write. Publish. Repeat. I think it makes excellent sense. But I'm shy! This email list thing. Who'd want to listen to me?
Let's see.
I saw a rainbow this morning. You know that the word for rainbow in Welsh is enfys; In Greek it's iris. Rainbow is pretty good, but I think those are better. I remember talking to a German who told me that he thinks German is ugly (I don't by the way. I like the sound of it.) He gave as an example schmetterling for butterfly. He said the English and the French words (papillon) are more beautiful than the German. I don't think butterfly is beautiful. It's only a fly that eats butter. And we don't like flies with their scratchy legs and big multi headlamp eyes. Now flutterby is a whole different gig.
Laters homies
Tony
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