Saturday, July 9, 2011

A Wise Man Once Said...as one door closes, another opens....

.....What he neglected to mention is that that if you're standing behind the door, it's very likely to hit you in the face, breaking your nose and fracturing your front teeth.

    My point being? Amazon is the very large, steel-reinforced door (picture a bank vault) that has just swung closed in my face of self-promotion. My nose now protrudes from the back of my head. I look like a werewolf from behind. My teeth and lips used to be seperate entities, not any more. I knew my incisors and canines had a secondary purpose, it was to keep the blood in place. Get the picture?
    Anyway, to cut a long story short, Amazon have now stopped all self-promotion within their forums. Except for a specially-designed "Meet The Author" area. Now, to me, this conjures up images of 120,000 people trying to cram into "Central Perk" of Friends fame, for a cup of coffee.
    I have included an example at the bottom of the page, not of Central Perk, but the friendly Giant who is Amazon, not saying "this will stop now" but actively deleting all self-promotional posts in the history of mankind. The reason it's at the bottom of the page is because it's in a box which I can't move up. Sorry. Stupid.

    So I've covered the big bastard door closing on my experiment. Now picture this, I am lying in the Emergency room, my face looking like a pizza which has been flung from a speeding car and run over by a bus before being dragged to a fox's lair and then chewed by him and his entire family for a week. I can hear the heart monitor beeping once every hour. "He's going to need a full head transplant," says the doctor, "he'll never be the same. My God, he's only sold four books and now this. I pray I don't have to be the one to tell him, if he makes it." .....Now stay with me; take a pause and some drugs if you think it might help........" Then, all of a sudden, that little cartoon mouse Jerry, opens his little door in the skirting board and squeaks, "Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, wake up. I can help you. I know you need to get rid of another 499,996 books before Christmas. I'm just a little guy, like you, but let's do this together." And so today, I discovered.....



There, is that a, big enough plug for you?
A brand new website for ebook readers and authors. Good luck to them and let's support them. F++k Amazon....RANT OVER!   Disclaimer: I am no way affiliated with the above website.


Back to business. Today's sales? Sorry, as I  refer to them now...Distribution. Paid for or not.

Kindle: No change. 4 sales in total.
Smashwords: A 24% rise in The Facebook Killer: Part 1 (Free Edition). Now standing at 123 copies. Still only 1 sale of The Sunday Club.
Blog-views: An average of 20 per day (welcome Thailand, by the way.)

So, as the experiment stands, I now have 148 people reading my words. Statistically, if each one of these 148 readers tells 3,379 of their friends, then I can reach my target by Christmas, and I thought this was going to be difficult. What could be simpler?

Update on my "Negative Publicity Experiment"

My insane attempt to prove that "all publicity is good publicity".
Quote of the day: "An error has occurred. Sorry, Guest, but you have been banned from this forum."
So much for freedom of speech! May I just point out that when I take part in these forums, I do so with the greatest reverance for their members and webmasters. I do not intentionally cause offence, I only display a page or two of the literature and invite opinions. Any foul language is replace with asterixes, so as not to upset the ********.
Tomorrow I shall seek some literary praise from further Christian websites.

The Sunday Club Screenplay:

A few weeks ago, I sent a copy of The Sunday Club for consideration to literary agents, Gregory & Co. of London. I received a very nice email from their Submissions Editor, Mary Jones. It went something like this.

.... It’s all highly visual, a bit like The Italian Job (the original).....do please give serious consideration to re-writing it as a screenplay....we wish you all success with this project.

Now she didn't say the book sucked, how could she, even my Great Uncle Donald's dog loved it, he said it was the best thing he's ever eaten. So, being experimental as I am, I began converting the 380 page novel into a 90 page screenplay, with a little help from Celtx software. This task will be completed in a week or two and then I will send it off to Mr Spielberg and Ridley Scott. Feel free to follow my fast track to Hollywood on this blog.

I'm sure most new authors fantasise about their work becoming a blockbuster movie. Well stay tuned, folks, because I'm gonna show you the reality. The cruel rejections, the no-replies and the depths a man will go to in order to fill a blog every day for five months (as promised).

Did I mention that I'm an eight-armed mutant with four computers?....no?

REVIEWS:

The problem is I don't have any. There appears to be an embarrassing silence. Only Aunt Doris and Great Uncle Donald's dog have made any worthy contribution to my literary genius. Aunt Doris has cataracts and the dog isn't to be trusted. So if anyone reading this blog wants a free copy of The Sunday Club (for review purposes only) send me an email at author@mlstewart.com Iand I will have someone email you a copy. I still have an outstanding Interpol warrant so it won't come from me. You can download a free copy of The Facebook Killer #1 from the link above. Please feel free to post you reviews in the comments section of the blog. Be truthful, be honest, be brutal but don't be afraid.

Well my friends, thank you for being here for me and taking part in this experiment. I wouldn't call myself the underdog, I think of myself more as the flea on the underdog's testicles.

Can it be done? Well put it this way. If four pot-heads can have their picture taken on a zebra crossing and sell that many records, I reckon I can hit my target.

168 days until Christmas.....that is if the ******** don't ban me from that as well.


Looking for Unexpected Endings.


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Your post: Jun 28, 2011 8:10:44 AM PDT
ML_Stewart says:
[Deleted by Amazon on Jul 6, 2011 10:38:13 AM PDT]


In reply to an earlier post on Jun 29, 2011 7:29:31 PM PDT
CTrip says:
[Deleted by Amazon on Jun 30, 2011 4:53:10 PM PDT]




2 new posts since your last visit
Posted on Jul 1, 2011 9:53:03 AM PDT
[Deleted by Amazon on Jul 6, 2011 10:38:09 AM PDT]





In reply to an earlier post on Jul 1, 2011 10:47:33 AM PDT
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