Wednesday, October 26, 2011

ML Stewart versus Stieg Larssssssssson



Now I know I keep going on about “The Girl With A Helmet-Shaped Haircut” and the fact that the hardback is the size of small block of flats BUT it’s the only book I have looked at for years AND it is the worst book I have read in my entire bloody life.

I told you about donating it to the local police to use as a roadblock but after the fatal bus crash they returned it (perfectly intact. The bus was a write-off). I think the driver saw the cover and panicked.

My point is how fickle the book-reading public can be at times. I read many of the reviews for The Girl Who Played With Fire and many people are of the same opinion as myself but many, many more have been sucked overcome by a mutant strain of the Dodgy Swedish Flu. Stieg Larssssssson is proof that anyone (dead or alive, blind or deaf, stupid or police officer can write a book.”

Page 350:
Stieg wrote: She replied with an elbow to his eye and then grabbed one of the upright poles, lifted herself up and kicked him with both heels across the bridge of his nose.............

So far so good, I felt myself wince in pain at the thought. But then he carries on.....

.......which prompted heavy bleeding.

Jesus Christ Almighty in a f+cking pink bath robe!!!  She’s just smashed his face in, broken his nose in two, probably sent bone fragments into his eyes and what happened........it prompted heavy bleeding! It sounds like a newspaper advert announcing the recall of a batch of dodgy tampons. AND this mini Everest of paper costs £20:00 (that’s about $40 if Obama is your boss)

Anyway, glad I got that off my chest and BTW no, I do not have permission to reproduce the above paragraph from Mr. Larsssssssson’s work of art.

I am going to write a series of books based on my past girlfriends.
1)      The Girl Who Lit Her Farts.
2)      The Girl Who Had More Facial Hair Than Her Father.
3)      The Girl Who Kicked My Dog.
4)      The Girl With The Bulldog Tattoo.


Book Sales and statistics and boring shit like that:


July
August
September
TOTAL

Royalty
Royalty
Royalty


 (USD)
 (USD)
 (USD)











SC
1.05
0.35
0

FBK1
1.05
1.40
19.25

FBK2
2.10
1.75
7.44

$ TOTAL
4.20
3.50
26.69
34.39






Royalty
Royalty
Royalty


 (GBP)
 (GBP)
 (GBP)











SC
0.99
0.26
36.40

FBK1
0.70
1.05
0.00

FBK2
1.69
1.31
700.52

£ TOTAL
£3.38
£2.62
£736.92
742.92



What’s happening at the moment is that the sales, which have dropped on FBK2, are being made up for with people buying FBK1. Who will in turn buy FBK2 and 3 when it comes out. It’s like a little hamster wheel with a few pound coins inside of it.

FBK1 = 24,085
FBK2 = 5,300 readers
Sunday Club = 310

Total Readership = 29,695.

FBK2 has sold more copies this month than September, as has the Sunday Club so  revenue should be up a little from last month.


Next week I have to take a 3-day flight to a secret destination in the Southern Hemisphere, where the water goes down the plughole in the opposite direction. So the blog may be a little quiet for a while. I hope to have the United Kingdom of Islam finished by the time I arrive and proof read.

I am trying to concoct a new marketing idea between packing my stuff, tripping over the world’s largest book and worrying about Rooney the cactus.

Until next time.

ML Stewart


Saturday, October 22, 2011

Don't talk ... DO!

I am sick to death of reading posts on different forums about.. why don't we try this? Or "I had this idea". So I have started a a proboards forum called http://e-authors.proboards.com/  It is for authors and readers alike.

It is a blank canvas without the bullshit. If anyone wants to get involved email me at ml.stewart@yahoo.co.uk
Now let me tell you this, I have no intention of running, let alone monitoring it for any length of time. So any volunteers who wish to get off their arses and create something are more than welcome.

Regards
MLS

Friday, October 21, 2011

I Have Writer's Block, Cramp, Elbow, Knee, Finger and a cactus called Rooney.

I was trawling through some online interviews with self-published authors, obviously none as famous as myself, but authors nonetheless, and a very good point I picked up on, with many of them, was that they wrote their first book as they thought it should be written. In other words following the mainstream advice, like sheep. You know the sort of thing, the macho hero, the love interest, the unlikable villain etc etc. And guess what? They bombed. When you write like this you are just another book on the shelf (didn’t Pink Floyd write a song about that?) The difference is that you are still an unknown and your work is nestled among famous and successful authors, which will sell a thousand times more than your own.

The wiser of the aforementioned indie authors soon realised that they should have been writing from the heart, not the textbook, and that’s when they started to sell and get themselves noticed. Now, I will never be a sheep, I prefer to think of myself as the deranged rabid wolf in the pack, the Anti Author. My next book may stay at the bottom of the Amazon Top Million for eternity, but at least I can stand up proudly and say that I wrote my own story. I didn’t pinch ingredients from several best-selling authors and make a plagiaristic omelette. (I’m only covering my arse here in case The United Kingdom Of Islam fails miserably :) but you get my point.

FBK1 and 2 were recommended on a recent Kindle forum as books “which grab you by the throat and won’t let go,” which I thought was nice. Bedtime reading at its finest.

I now have 29,000 readers worldwide.
FBK1 – 23,656 (Free + Paid)
FBK2 – 5,000 (21% follow through on sales from Part 1 in UK and 60% in US.)
The Sunday Club – 270
And this has only really happened in the last six weeks. FBK2 sales are ranging between 80 on a bad day up to 130. Some reviewers are still complaining about having to pay for the second part but after almost 5,000 sales there have only been 9 returns so they can’t be that upset about it.

I spent the last three days, rereading the three books I have on Kindle and still found a couple of typos, nothing serious but annoying for the reader, so these have been rectified. The problem with paying for an editor is that you’re not guaranteed to sell enough books to cover their costs, so until I have that luxury I will just have to get on with it by myself with the assistance of my blind mate, Quasi.

UKI is now up to 50,000 words, I hope to have it finished within a week or so, proofread and then online. My technique will be to publish it quietly, there will be no fanfare on the forums whatsoever. I want it to sell just like the Sunday Club so that the readers think they have discovered it themselves.

I hope to have FBK3 out before Xmas, but I am in two minds whether to wait until the glut of promotions and Xmas specials are over in case it gets lost amongst all of the forum “bumping”. Let’s see how I get on. I have the plot worked out in full, but you know me, it could turn into a vampire love story set in Pompeii during the alien occupation.

Stay tuned gang.
Best regards
MLS


ml.stewart@yahoo.co.uk

 


“The flag of Islam will fly over Downing Street, and Queen Elizabeth will wear the burka,” Abu Waleed, Radical Preacher, London 2008.

THE UNITED KINGDOM OF ISLAM.
2039 A.D.

It was in the year of our Lord, 2020 that they began to build the walls. The Welsh government were the first to act. The quarries couldn’t produce the stone they needed quickly enough, so they began to tear down schools, houses and even churches. A pardon was granted to each and every prisoner held within the land, on the condition that they assist in the construction. Not one of them absconded. They dared not.

Scotland quickly followed suit, but they built much higher than the Welsh, destroying bridges and roads leading into the country as they went. They were the best prepared of anyone. As soon as they heard the news they went into military lockdown. No one could come in and no one could leave. They had fought long and hard for their independence and they were determined to keep it.

Their army had sealed the border within an hour, their battleships and submarines put to sea and the air force scrambled. Some people say that they had been warned; some say they just saw it coming.

Ireland, for the first time in twenty years, reunited. The governing bodies on both sides of the border held an emergency meeting and agreed to turn their missiles away from each other and towards the British mainland instead. Catholics and Protestants stood together, with enough firepower to eradicate every living creature on the land mass formally known as Great Britain.

I have been told that it was terrifying and totally unexpected. The government agencies thought they were so clever monitoring their emails and chat rooms while all the time they were organising it by post. Sending letters like they did in the olden times. I’d heard my father talking about that.

The first thing anyone knew about the uprising was when the cargo planes hit London. Father had told me stories about something similar happening in New York when he was a child, but he compared those planes to mosquitoes. He said they were small and filled with blood; the London planes were filled with explosives. Sometimes, when I was smaller, Father would show me pictures of the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, somewhere called St. Paul’s and the other places that were lost. I remember those pictures well; I had never seen buildings like that in real life, but there again I had grown up in the Northern Territory.
I vividly remember Father’s stories of the war. There must have been thousands upon thousands of them in the army, navy and police, train drivers, airport workers and hauliers. Father told me that’s how they got their hands on the tanks, ships and planes. I can’t believe no one saw it coming, the mass slaughter of their colleagues. He told me it happened at exactly midday on September 11th, 2020.  That was when Britain went to war. That was the day when the Radical Islamists took over our skies, seas and roads.

            The French aircraft carrier, “Charles De Gaulle III” which they dispatched to help us, was sunk in the English Channel, reportedly torpedoed. The hijacked radio stations and television networks played a recording, over and over again, announcing that London was now under Sharia Law and that the Radical Islamic Party had formed the country’s new government in the absence of any other, or a reigning monarch.

People fled like rats. They say that every last boat left the island that day, ferries, yachts and even canoes. We don’t know how many were lost at sea trying to make it to Europe or Ireland.

            As the troops marched through the streets, Father said it became obvious that they had been planning this for years. The soldiers and police officers marched as one, their British uniforms burned; dressed all in black now. Their faces Asian, white, black, young, old, male and female. Their uniforms bore the same emblem as the warplanes, which flew low overhead and the tanks parked on almost every street corner. The letters RIP surrounded by five stars, white on black, Father once told me that it looked a little like a flag some European Union had once used, but they were long gone now. Maybe they could have helped us?

            They used helicopter gunships to take over the prisons; the most serious offenders: the murderers, rapists and paedophiles were executed in their cells, the bodies burned in the exercise yard. The remainder were ordered to leave the city and head north. Their own prisoners were rewarded, their sentences exchanged for titles.

Ahmed Al Adel – 45 years for inciting racial hatred, possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit mass murder – Secretary of State for Defence.
Ramadan Ali Munawar – Life imprisonment for the 2012 bombing of the Olympic Stadium, killing 21,857 – Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Abdul Bin Shallah – 7 life sentences for the British Freedom Party annual conference bombing, 2018 – Home Secretary.

The prison cells didn’t remain empty for long. Whomever the planes didn’t kill that day were quickly rounded up like stray dogs: politicians, councillors, right-wing extremists, journalists and even members of the clergy. No court, no trial. Political prisoners they called them. Father said that it was the Jihadist Death Squads who came for them, the Black Hawks. Balaclava-clad men and women. “The Motorcyclists of the Apocalypse”, he had called them; he said they were the most frightening beings he had ever seen. They carried machine guns and swords, riding three abreast always in groups of twelve and followed by the “meat wagon,” a large black security van equipped with a fireman’s hose on the roof to wash the blood from the streets when they were done. They sounded like something from one of those ancient 2D war movies.

It didn’t take long for the ethnic cleansing to begin. The head of RIP, Mohammed Kazik, had assured people that they were free to remain in their homes but were now under Sharia law and must abide by it if they chose to continue living in London. Should they decide to leave, they would be given free passage to the North. Little did the wretched souls know, but their passage north would not be so free.

They travelled south, in their hundreds and thousands, to join the revolution, arriving on hijacked trains, in buses, packed to bursting point and in the back of trucks. They were bloodthirsty. Their time had eventually come. The convoys of vehicles poured towards the capital, like an army of giant ants, flags waving, horns blasting, driving on both sides of the roads and motorways.  The infidels had no chance. Men, women and children of all ages and nationalities. Christians, peace-loving Muslims and atheists, it didn’t matter to them. They were all the enemy now. The RIP government denied genocide and there was no one left to question them.

The simultaneous uprisings in Bradford, Birmingham and Leeds had drawn the new boundaries. The north-south divide had eventually become a grim reality and a deadly one at that.

My name is Emily Piper, I am the leader of the Northern Resistance Force and this is my story.



Saturday, October 15, 2011

ML STEWART: Registered Charity No. 6215463

I started writing this blog yesterday.............

This is getting bloody downright ridiculous. Without giving away any of the plot, one of the characters in UKI is in London with her two daughters, she is breaking the curfew, she was supposed to be heading to the Tube station and she ends up in an illegal Irish Bar. Now I ask you...where the hell did that come from? Talk about “free flow” writing.

The last month has been mental, with the 22,000 downloads of FBK1 etc. I spent half my time on forums and answering emails, but do you know what? Things have calmed down now and by God I’m pleased about that. It gives me time to take a step back, continue writing and step out of the spotlight for a while. Okay it wasn’t a very big spotlight...Okay more like a candle, but you know what I mean.

........... and then the son of the almighty Amazon, Kindle Christ himself must have grassed me up to his dad, who in turn sent a mighty lightning bolt into my crotch. The b+stards have only gone and done it again. FBK1 is free, AGAIN!!!!!!

I was quite happy trundling along selling 30+ copies of part 1 each day. It helped to pay for the court costs involved for the manslaughter charges which arose from that bus hitting Stieeeeeg Laaaaaaaaaarson’s book in the middle of the road and, I admit, it massaged my ego just a tad. But now I am back to being a Kindle Whore.

I wrote my first “tweet” today or should that be “I tweeted my first words today”? I have 3 followers and that was before I actually worked out how to use the damned thing. I used up most of 140 characters with spaces and punctuation, so next time Iamgoingtowriteitjustlikethis.

It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? The Twitter Killer, it sounds a little like the Chatroom Scoundrel... It rubs the L’Oreal PH5 anti wrinkle cream on its skin.

So what are you up to at the minute you crazy bastard I hear you cry? Well MLS is heading to the southern hemisphere in the next couple of weeks to escape the harsh European police (and winter) but, much to your despair, I will continue writing. Rooney the cactus will be planted in my garden so that when I return he should have a full head of prickles. I am having four security cameras installed to keep an eye on him.

The United Kingdom Of Islam is coming along nicely; the manuscript looks quite pretty with most of the words underlined in red or green. I don’t know what it means but I think it’ll help sales when I sneak it out there.

I’ve run out of things to talk about so instead I’m going to post a little bit of ML Stewart’s version of the Bible (covers his nuts). This is my strange little hobby project, which entails me actually having to read the bullshit before I can take the piss out of it (lightning bolt hits the rectum). It is only a first draft which will probably never be proof read or indeed finished.

At the end of the bible passage is my twitter address, please don’t use it.


GENESIS
           


            In the beginning when Gordon Oxley Developments created the Battersea Towers Social Housing Estate, the area was a formless void, littered with the burned-out trophies of boy-racers and used syringes. A desolate, muddy wasteland, lashed by wind and rain. Then G.O.D. said, “let there be light”; and they erected behemoth steel pylons, connected power cables, inserted lampposts. And G.O.D. saw that the lights were good. They came on at night and went off during the day. Round-the-clock construction called for two shifts, there was the evening and the morning. The first day.
            Since construction started it hadn’t stopped pissing down; “a right fucking quagmire” said the site foreman, so G.O.D. said, “let there be blue tarpaulins erected to cover the whole site.” And so it was.  And G.O.D. called the tarpaulins Sky, and the workers called them “fucking noisy in the wind”. And there was the evening and the morning shifts. The second day.
            And G.O.D said, “let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. Day and night, the industrial pumps drained the wasteland until it was dry and then a gang of six youths from nearby Vauxhall nicked the pumps and generators. But at least the earth was dry. And then G.O.D said, “Let us plant vegetation and grass.” And it was so, until six workers were arrested for growing cannabis behind the portacabins. And there was the evening and the morning shifts. The third day.
            And G.O.D. said, “Can somebody please fix some of these fucking light bulbs. The tarmaccers are coming in the morning.” So the foreman had a whole load of new lights strung up and improved the spotlights for working day and night. And G.O.D. saw that it was good and gave him a pat on the back. And there was the evening and the morning shifts. The fourth day.
            And G.O.D. said, “let’s get that fucking fish pond filled soon, the tenants will be moving in in two days.” And so the birds came and multiplied; feasting happily on the remnants of gangha leaves. And there was the evening and the morning shifts. The fifth day.
            And G.O.D. said, “Bring forth the concrete animal sculptures which will make these poor bastards feel like they’re living in the countryside.” And so the forklifts delivered the cattle and sheep. And G.O.D. saw that it was good. Then G.O.D. cleared up the site and moved all of its equipment, which hadn’t been stolen, back to its depot. And so the Mayor of London came forth to welcome and bless the tenants. White, black, Asian and Eastern European. And as the mayor cut the ribbon to officially open Battersea Towers his Bentley was duly hotwired and found embedded in a telephone box three hours later.
            Thus the Battersea Towers Social Housing Estate and landscaped surrounds were finished and all their multitude. And on the seventh day G.O.D. hired the local Social Club and got all of his workers drunk in appreciation for their hard work. After all it seemed like a good venue to announce the redundancies.




Adam O’Rafferty & Eve Wilson.

            Adam O’Rafferty had been a thieving little bastard from the day he was born. Why the hell G.O.D. decided to employ him as the gardener was beyond anyone’s comprehension. When the tenants in the ground floor flats saw him working nearby they locked their windows. They tried to start a petition against his employment but soon realised that none of them could write English. Not only was he a thief but he was a whinging bastard too. That’s why G.O.D. ended up giving him an assistant, Eve “Stoner” Wilson, what she hadn’t sniffed or injected hadn’t been invented yet. But here they were, working together; keeping Battersea Towers well groomed and tidy.
            All went well for the first two months, but she just couldn’t stay away from the crack pipe. It didn’t take long. They were both high as kites when they got arrested; stark-bollock-naked as well. Eve claimed in court that she was hallucinating due to a snakebite. Adam reckoned that he’d gotten food poisoning from a dodgy apple. Whatever the truth, G.O.D. fired them. It later transpired that Adam still hadn’t learned to keep his hands off other people’s things. It turns out that he’d pinched an I-Phone from his supervisor’s office, ended up doing a three-month stretch for public indecency offences and theft. It doesn’t end there, mind you, rumour has it that when Adam was banged-up, Eve was getting banged-up as well. She dropped a couple of kids; Khan and Abdul. They grew up without many problems. They managed to stay away from the drugs and thieving and eventually started their own businesses. Khan went into arable farming; while Abdul concentrated on sheep farming. It turns out they had some business differences and Khan ended up slaying Abdul, but not before Abdul managed to slash his brother’s face. Khan is still on Europe’s Most Wanted list.
            As for that twat, Adam, he got out of jail and went straight onto benefits. Tucked up in a council house he managed to father a shed-load of kids, all of who apparently inherited his liking for drugs. Most of them ended up in a secure mental hospital after claiming to be eight hundred years old.





@AuthorMLStewart    WARNING: DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK OR YOU WILL RECEIVE A VIRUS DIRECTLY UP YOUR TWITTER.

ml.stewart@yahoo.co.uk

 All the best
MLS

Thursday, October 13, 2011

72 Days Until Xmas...Can It Be Done?

I am frustrated today so take cover......NOW!

My latest piece of what I like to generally class as “trash fiction” should be almost finished now. I am up to 45,000 words, but it’s not, it’s barely half way through. It was supposed to be a “novella” (to the non-author readers, that means I couldn’t be arsed writing a full-length book) but it’s developing into an epic of massive proportions. I could release it in two parts? Hmmmmm... cheeky. I don’t know, I’ll let Norman decide, it’s his turn to write tomorrow.

Here is my first draft of a highly controversial cover for, what I hope will be, a slightly controversial book.



 

 FBK2 sales are now at 4200 and still selling around 120 - 150 daily. (sellthrough 19% and rising)
 FBK1 -22,100
 SC -220

Readership of 27,000 +
Revenue of around $2,700 in the last 5 weeks.



I received this email today from HarperCollins Publishers. (authonomy.con sorry com)

OCT 2011
Authonomy Announces Digital Imprint

Dear authonomites
As some of you may have noticed, new faces have been popping up
behind the virtual authonomy gates. Last month we announced that
Scott Pack, Publisher at The Friday Project, had been appointed the
new head of authonomy.com; Scott stepped onboard with this primary
objective: to ensure that more of the great books on the site get
published.

TODAY, WE'RE THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE THAT AS PART OF THIS INITIATIVE, SCOTT WILL BE LAUNCHING A DIGITAL PUBLISHING PROGRAMME DEDICATED TO AUTHONOMY'S BEST AUTHORS!

The books will be hand-picked by the Scott and the authonomy
Editorial Board, worked on by HarperCollins' finest publishing teams,
and published as HarperCollins digital originals across all possible
devices. This new HarperCollins list will look to publish one book a
month, starting in January 2012. Most importantly, all of the titles
will have been discovered on the authonomy.com website and will be
published digital originals. The bestselling titles will go on to
have print editions.

Isn’t that big of them? Isn’t this what we are doing for ourselves? Self-publishing. It’s free! I don’t quite get where HC are coming from with this. Keep the advertising revenue generated from their site, perhaps?

My accountant hasn't been seen for over a week now. The local police Inspector, who takes a thousand Euros a month to look after my garden, says that there are no suspicious circumstances, all debts are cancelled and Rooney the cactus is coming home. What more can a man ask for?

That's all for today my friends

MLS



Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Fact Or Fiction? (MLS In The City)

Jesus Christ, I just had a Sarah Jessica Parker moment there when I thought of a subject for today’s blog. Have I suddenly questioned my sexuality? No. Have I developed a face like an anorexic horse? Certainly not. I am simply taking a literary pause from writing highly graphic scenes about cannibalism. Got a problem with that have you? Well you can finish it if you think you’ve got what it takes.

Fact or fiction?
During my lunch of Beluga caviar and champagne on soggy toast, I decided to look at some reviews from other author’s books. What brought this on I hear you ask mid-yawn. Well, apart from the medication, I watched a movie (US) film (UK) last night entitled “Trade”. Blah, blah, blah there are Russians running a child kidnap racket out of Mexico City. This adjusted the chemical balances and electro-neuron activity within my brain to remind me of a comment I received about the Ukrainian gangsters in FBK. The reviewer called it “clichéd”. Now the only clichéd thing about the Russian mafia in the UK is their unending supply of funds and their ability to obtain absolutely anything for a price. Believe me I have worked with these people many times and I kid you not. I was once present for a meeting within an Industrial unit, not so far from Heathrow airport and these guys had a stolen, that’s right STOLEN, Westland Lynx military helicopter.  Now how clichéd can you get? Jesus wept!

This brings me to my point, via helicopter, most of the authors out there are writing fictional books. These are works of fantasy; they are supposed to take you to another place for a few hours at a time.  They are designed to transport you out of your humdrum life, away from the mortgage arrears and extra marital affair that your spouse just found out about to a happier, carefree place. So what is it with the voice of doom reviewers? “That couldn’t happen in real life...just too unbelievable...the facts were wrong in your book about the birth of Christ, we all know that a baby wouldn’t be allowed to lie next to a pile of donkey shit for that long a period or he would contract hyperventilatractionalbullshittingme disease.” .... F+CK OFF!!!!! Please...Just go and disembowel yourselves.

Okay, I have now transported myself back in time to 1968; I have just finished my latest book. It’s about a space ship landing on a planet, which is ruled by apes and humans are the under species. At the end my hero is looking for somewhere to have a pee on the beach when he discovers the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand. Fact or Fiction? Did anyone ever explain what happened? Was it explained to us how apes learned to talk and look like Roddy McDowell (I am not going to Google his name for a correct spelling, so don’t even go there.) The answer is no because this is escapism and it made almost $48 million.

These sad reviewers should stuff their bowels back into the cavity and start reading books about an orphaned slave in the 1921 tea famine of Ceylon who was brought up by a one-legged nun and ended up winning the Nobel Prize for developing sugar cubes. There. Finished. Get my point? No. Well I do and that’s all that counts.

It’s been a pleasure, as always, but I must get back to my cannibalism now.

Regards
ML Stewart

PS whoever tried to hack my email account at 1:50 am Big Ben Time this morning is gonna be in a lot of trouble.







Monday, October 10, 2011

And Now The Experiment Becomes Interesting.......

Why? I hear you grumbling to yourself, in between thoughts of what’s on the television tonight and should I stop reading this arsehole’s lame Blog? (How come arsehole is in the spellchecker, yet Adolf isn’t? Maybe the thesaurus has the two words linked?)

Well after Amazon kindly gave away 22,000 copies of FBK1 for free, they have decided in their eternal wisdom to start charging 86p again, something that I won’t moan about. Since the price label went back on four days ago I have sold a further 150 copies (money, money, money!) and 600 copies of FBK2. Now I will be able to gauge the true follow through. In other words, people who thought that FBK1 was shit will not buy part 2. The current follow through is 17.5% = 3820 sales of FBK2. Plus 210 sales of the Sunday Club. Now 17.5% doesn’t seem like a big percentage but bear in mind that a lot of people are still storing FBK1 on their Kindle, unread ..... I hope. Therefore it is going to take a few more weeks to get the real results through. Stay tuned. Sales of FBK in the US are slow but the follow through is 60%, which is more than encouraging.

The United Kingdom Of Islam is rapidly taking shape. I am dedicating work on it from 11:00am until 7:00pm, seven days a week. As I mentioned in an earlier Blog, there appear to be too many authors who establish a winning formula and just keep bashing the same old bullshit out. The readers buy it because they are used to buying it. I don’t want to end up like that. I’d rather give a monkey my computer and let him get on with it. UKI might bomb instantly or it may become as successful as FBK, either way, I have to give it my best go. That’s all I can do.

Now that’s the statistics out of the way. What can we talk about next? Oh yes, I almost forgot. Many facets of UKI are about going back to the primitive way of doing things. Fire as opposed to electricity blah, blah, blah. So it got me thinking, (in that strange way that I do) How could I take a uniquely modern day idea back to its primitive roots and do you know what I came up with? I hope not, because that would make us equally troubled. SPAM!

Okay imagine that you are a caveman or woman, you’ve just killed the biggest mammoth in history and you’ve got so much meat left over that you need to start selling it. How do you do it? You start to spam the neighbouring tribes. Are you with me? You send your fastest runner to the neighbours' cave with a rock and some red berry juice. When they’re all out hunting and gathering he writes on their Facerock Wall, “mammoth steaks for sale at the Kindle cave, only 86p each” and then he runs like f+ck back home before he gets a flint in his arse.

Where am I going with this? Well before the Internet, before emails, gmail, yahoo and hotmail we had bottles. Bottle mail. Today I sent my butler with five hundred bottles down to the beach. Each one contained an advert for FBK and a link. He was arrested after throwing four hundred into the sea, so I finished the job. Now give me the name of any author who has tried this before and I’ll give you my butler’s job during his six months incarceration.

Stay tuned for the results.

Regards
ML Stewart











Thursday, October 6, 2011

How To Make £1000 From Ebooks (and waste two years of your life in the process)

So what’s happening in the ML Stewart Fun House? I hear you all cry in a desperate thirst for knowledge kind of way.

Well, in between ogling obese bikini-clad women on the beach out front, I’m still pounding away on “The United Kingdom Of Islam.” I am attempting 3,000 words a day, preferably at least 500 of those spelled correctly and I’m close to my target. My spellchecker has exploded in protest. I’m thinking about going into the movie business or audio books, I mean they don’t have to worry about spelling or punctuation, do they? It would simplify my life no end. What is UKI about? I hear you scream with blood lust. Well I don’t know it isn’t finished yet. The way I write it could be about anything.

FBK2 is maintaining sales of 160 a day and remains #2 horror-thriller and #50 bestseller in the UK. Follow through sales, this month, from FBK1 are over 50%, thanks to my blind proofreader sorting out the correct version to be uploaded.

Now I could go ahead and keep writing FBKs until I die, but it’s a niche market and I want to expand my readership. That’s why I’m writing UKI, to broaden my horizons and try and attract a different kind of 1-star review.

I have received an offer to make FBK into a film, it’s true, the offer came from a film student with no money but grand ideas. My lawyer told him to go and ask his parents for extra pocket money, then come back and we can talk. Seriously though, if you know someone that wants to make FBK into a movie, they can have it cheap.

Stieieieig Laaaaaaaarson’s book: “The Girl With a Helmet-Shaped Haircut” is still lying about my villa. As God is my witness, I tried more than once to get into it but failed miserably. Plus it’s so f++king big! When I tried to read it in bed, I had to buy an artist’s easel to put it on, it was lashed with ropes to keep it open but eventually the easel collapsed into the lounge as the floor gaze way beneath it. I have tried using it as a doorstop, as a mooring for my boat; I even thought about hollowing out the pages and using it as a garden shed. Eventually I donated it to the local Police who are going to use it as a roadblock. Do you think I’m joking? A book that big is the equivalent of having a Kindle the size of a 40-inch plasma TV. I kid you not, it’s bloody ridiculous.

So the experiment?
The plan is to launch UKI, hopefully in the middle of October, which will allow me six weeks to finish FBK3, then just before Santa’s fat arse arrives, maybe a collection of short stories. By that time I will have achieved my goal of having 500,000 readers, without a shadow of a doubt????????????????????????

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys, Girls and Interpol. Thank you for stopping by my pathetic, deluded and rambling blog.

ML Stewart

Monday, October 3, 2011

26,000 Readers: That’s More Readers Than Spelling Mistakes!

The results are in for September (US & UK combined)
FBK1: 20,964 readers. (Boo Hoo, you could have told us this was part one of two. I didn’t see the cover. I want my free money returned:)
FBK2: 2,729 readers. (Still #2 thriller/horror and #53 Amazon Top 100.)
SC:  147 readers. (Still in the Amazon Top Million)

Adding Smashwords, Apple etc to this. The total readership since the start of the experiment now totals: 26,210

The free downloads of FBK1 have slowed to around 250 per day, but this was expected, I estimated 20,000 downloads maximum, this is now over 21,000, so I now hope to reach 25,000.

The follow through sales of FBK2 were almost exactly 160 per day last month. The percentage started at 8% but is now at 13% in total. Although daily it is averaging 50% over the past 3 days. If I reach a follow through of 50% I will have each and every one of your babies.

 I have now stopped reading any reviews left for FBK1; with 26 4 and 5 star reviews I will only start taking things personally. I asked Dermott to check out one of the 1 star reviews; he emailed me the following report.

Dear Mr. Stewart,
The boy made the mistake of following up his criticism on his Twitter account. He wasn’t too difficult to track down. His best friend, who got married this year (I have watched the video in great detail on YouTube) runs a company in Surrey, where she also works as a columnist for a certain local newspaper, her business is to train small businesses how to advertise on social media sites, mainly Facebook, therefore his bad review is solely an attempt to protect his business interests. Because they don’t realise the power which we have. His name is Lee Carney and I have sent you attached photographs.”

I received another review from the former President of Czechoslovakia who is also a playwright, novelist and dramatist. Exactly the sort of person my writing style is not directed towards. On the upside he also slagged off someone called Dan Brown? This fellow is the sort that would title FBK1 “The Facebook Killer (or a study into the post traumatic mind of a grief-defiant category 1 specimen, reminiscent of Freud’s controversial reports regarding the Thomas Van Deville case.)” I think the Hannibal Lecter thing says it all.

My next release UKI is almost halfway through, it is different to the FBK and I would like a couple of volunteers (they must be from the UK) to have a look at it (Stephen Leather need not apply) It isn’t proof read, I would just like some feedback on the storyline. Contact me at  ml.stewart@yahoo.co.uk . The book will be around 55,000 words long at priced at 86p.

FBK3 is still being investigated by Interpol but will released from custody before Xmas.

That’s all from me folks.
Respect!
MLS