Friday, September 23, 2011

If The Kindle Is To The Book What The Combustion Engine Was To The Horse...

Then where do we go from here? Am I in a philosophical mood today? No. I just couldn’t think of anything better to say. Now, did I just say that? Or did I write it? Or did you just think that I said it because you read it?

For those regular blog-readers (or is that listeners?) you will remember that I purposely caused an online outrage when I was rude about someone’s comments regarding my unique use of grammar. A stunt, which boosted viewers of this site and readership of my books tremendously, I hasten to add. The point of my argument was that many self-published Ebooks contain spelling and grammatical errors (not everyone is perfect nor can everyone afford the cost of an editor) I stated that you can see past these errors and that as long as you know what the author means it shouldn’t necessarily affect your enjoyment of the book. I used the example of TXT SPCH. I have included a further, far more dramatic example below, one, which, many of you may have seen before.

I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

After the initial anger subsided over my bollocking of an obviously well educated author, some people understood my point while others called me a moronic asshole. A term I felt quite at home with. This online debate has now developed into an interesting discussion regarding Audio books. Is listening to a book the same as reading it? Which brings me full circle to today’s headline. We now have software to make our own audio books, will this eventually supersede the kindle, Ipad etc. Imagine you can go jogging and still be reading / listening. You can “read” chapter 10 whilst driving the kids to school. In short, one day will we all stop reading and just start listening? Who knows and more importantly... Who gives a f*ck?



For some strange reason FBK1 and 2 made a dramatic leap in sales overnight, but not big enough to take the #1 spot from that highly acclaimed and far more successful author than myself, Mr. Stephen Leather. I put this jump in sales down to someone either being drunk and hitting the wrong button or some cunning hacker, locked away in a dark shed in Ohio somewhere trying to single-handedly bring down Amazon.com by distributing my book to unsuspecting readers via a virus in the hope that they will never want to read a Kindle book ever again.

For my faithful followers I have posted a sneak preview of FBK3 at the end of today’s blog.

My accountant called me today with the financial status of my book sales, when he finally calmed down and stopped laughing; he suggested that I ask for the deposit back for Rooney the cactus.

The dictionary, which I bought online, eventually arrived this morning, it’s going to prove very useful for my future writing, there is a picture next to each word, the cat is especially well drawn.

Before I go I would just like to quickly remind the newer readers about the reason this blog was started. If I can sell, giveaway or force down someone’s throat half a million of my Ebooks by Christmas, then I will donate all of the proceeds from my first book written in 2012 to charity, but believe me it won’t be the Apostrophe Society. If anyone can help me out by including links on their own blog or Facebook etc. we will see if we can achieve this together.



SB Jones said: 100 sales a day is nothing to sneeze at. I have posted on other blogs and forums about the price of a free book and what it can do to all the others you have as well. I think it is one of the most powerful tools a self published author has. However it works better with each title you have. If its your first and only book. It might get downloaded 100,000 times but you see $0 for it. Add 5 other titles and the free one generates 500 other sales across the line.

Think if you had FBK 2, 3, 4 and a Christmas special available when FBK1 went free?


ML Stewart replied: Hi again SBJ you are very right, FBK1 going out for free was my leg up, however I didn't want to complete FBK2 until I got some feedback. If part 1 had bombed then I would have wasted so much time writing the follow ups.




Regards
ML Stewart



As promised.....the sneak preview.




                            The Facebook Killer: Part 3

ML Stewart.



Well? What do you think?



2 comments:

SBJones said...

Looks like an excellent start on FBK3

Stefania said...

Hi there ML Stewart. Is there a chance I can contact you private?

Thanks,

Stefania.