Monday, July 11, 2011

It's 33 degrees celcius (in the shade), my book sales are like stagnant water, I have suffered God's wrath and Britain's top Indie author is picking on me.....

........ can my life get any worse?

How about that for an attention-grabbing headline, eh? Anyway,I have my health, wealth and freedom. I can't complain. ....Welcome back to day 10 of the experiment. My God, only ten days in, it feels like a month already.

  Firstly, to the joker that tagged my Kindle books as, and I quote, "homo-erotic", "chick-lit" and "boy love". I find this in no way amusing and please don't do it again or you will be severely spanked to death.

  Secondly, I would like, if I may, to bring Mr. Stephen Leather's comment out of the box and onto the page. Now for those of you who don't know, Mr. Leather is arguably the United Kingdom's number one Indie author, as well as having a very distinguished history and ongoing career in "real" publishing (remember paper everyone?) he has also written for television. Here it is (note the size of my font in relation to our career differences)

  ML Stewart: (squeaking) "Thanks Stephen, as a major international and highly-acclaimed author, I appreciate you visiting my blog. If you are the great blue whale, I am the minnow's poop-shoot and I hope to kick your arse one day! No offence, you understand?"

  Mr. Stephen Leather: (a loud roar) Ha ha. But it's a common mistake, to assume that kicking another writer's arse helps you. It doesn't. Your aim has to be to produce quality work and to sell it to as many people as possible. It's like running a marathon, it's your personal time that counts not what the runners around you are doing. I've lost count of the number of Indie writers who've said that they have me in their sights and their aim is to sell more than me. They come and they go and good luck to them. When I started down my eBook route I wasn't interested in how many books other writers sell, or who were above me in the bestseller lists. That doesn't matter. All that matters is how good my books are and how many I sell. But hey, if you wanna kick my arse, you go for it.....
  Now I hope that people reading this blog have ascertained by now that I am writing it a little tongue-in-cheek, yet I am serious about this endeavour. I am still submitting hard copies to UK agents and I would like to thank Mr. Leather for the above advice. We should all take note. To quote Jeffrey Archer's "First Among Equals", "It is the long distance runner who will win the race, not the sprinter." Or something along those lines.
  You can visit Mr. Leather's excellent website at http://www.stephenleather.com/ for further information. Not about running, obviously. BTW, this isn't a declaration of surrender!
  OK, so that's the homo-erotic tags done, kicking Leather's arse is out of the way. Let's move on...
I have to be honest, I know I'm not going to make much money from this self-publishing lark. Not yet anyway. Therefore, this morning, I included the Sunday Club in Smashwords.com Winter Sale. It is now free to download by clicking here. My current objective is just to get the work out there, get it read and hopefully get some positive reviews, or negative....anything.
  2 more copies have been sold (for free) on smashwords in the last hour.
The Facebook Killer has is now being digested by 151 people, since offering it for free six days ago, and Kindle managed to sell one more copy of The Sunday Club for 70p to a UK customer today.

 Total increase in readership since day one of the experiment: 154. If I continue at this rate (without   publishing anything new) I will have had around 2,600 readers by Christmas. A long way short of my near-impossible target but I hope someone may learn something through my endeavours.

  Tip of the day: Pride comes before the fall. Get your work out there. OK I spent almost a year writing The Sunday Club, but I'm giving it away. In my humble opinion, is it not better to have 154 people reading your work for free than two people and less than a dollar in your balance? Don't give up people. Even if I receive bad reviews (mind you, Uncle Donald's dog loved it) I will learn from them. I will come back with something better. The readers are the buyers, they are the judge and jury on our work.

OK time to put the soapbox back under the sofa and continue work on my chick-lit, homo-erotic novels. ********!!!

See you tomorrow.

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