Jealousy knows no boundaries

Never argue with an arsehole - he or she only has one orifice to speak out of!

I hate to harp on about the kdp forum, and there are an awful lot of self important nobodies on there who believe they are the next Shakespeare and anyone who cannot see it must be an idiot. Those are laughable and good for a chuckle or two. There is even one gentleman who seriously believes his books are being stopped by the government, who have hacked into his computer and destroyed his hard drive. Every time a post view is reported, he believes it is the CIA watching him and if he gets the message that there is an error when he tries to post, he once more believes it to be the government in some guise. Everybody gets these messages, usually when there is a word the bots don't like. One of those words, believe it or not, is 'character'. Would you believe a forum for authors does not allow that word? Anyway, it is obvious that this particular gentleman is seriously ill and since he does no harm to anyone, nobody bothers him.

 

Now we have a serious headcase who calls himself Charlie S. He also has a few other IDs which he thinks are fooling people, and even has conversations with these other personas. One is Jeff Elvero or some such, one is Olney and even one called Bet.

 

This creature has a business formatting books for kindle, and freaks out every single time anyone says they can do it themselves, very easily, using Word. That was bad enough and laughable, but now he is slandering people, including me, declaring that I am one of the ones getting posts deleted. This is simply not true, as I would rather get in a few arguments, and I think it is probably him who is doing it. Now he has gone to extremes and is not only slandering my name, but telling people to leave reviews on my books. I doubt he means 5 star reviews.

 

Now this person has written precisely two books, one a biography of C.S. Lewis which has sold so little, the rankings are down in the millions. Rather pathetic when you consider that A.N. Wilson has written a biography of C.S. Lewis and he has the right to call himself a professional biographer. This person's other attempt was a supernatural novelette which sounded quite interesting, except the description would put any reader off. I have  seen more badly written descriptions, but not many. Has he never heard of a full stop, or a comma? It was published in 2011 and is no longer available, I imagine because it didn't produce loads of glowing five star reviews nor make a fortune. It is called The Cistaphasmatis and there is still a review on Goodreads, despite his efforts to erase all trace of it.

 

This is someone who thinks he knows how to write and criticises everybody else's work, someone who declared that he has better things to do with his time than read. He also declares that he is afraid when he publishes his masterpiece that a literary agent will steal his idea and give it to a famous author. Have you ever heard of such self important arrogance?

 

So, when you see one star reviews on my books which are obviously from someone who has never read them, you know why. I would put this information on the forum except that my posts are continually deleted by this lunatic, so no point. He cannot delete them from here.

Refunds on ebooks - is it fair?

I was driven to write this post by a number of reports that there are so-called reputable websites out there actually advising people to buy their ebook from Amazon, and take advantage of their 7 day refund policy.

A lot of kindle editions are not very long and for people with plenty of time on their hands, it is easy enough to read the whole thing, then return it.  One person had read of someone boasting of having bought, read and returned over 1000 kindle books, all for nothing.

If she had gone out shoplifting and got away with it, thus costing the shop owner money, would she still be boasting of it?  Probably not.  More likely she would be condemning the person who shoplifted and even reporting such a person to the proper authorities, and she would feel very good about doing so.  But people think nothing of doing the same thing with an author, who doesn't simply buy in books to sell, but puts their heart and soul into them.  It is not Amazon she is cheating, it is the author.

I haven't heard of any websites advising people on how to shoplift and if they did, they would probably get a lot of complaints.  It is no different.

The refund policy gives readers confidence to buy from an unknown author, but it does rely on people's honesty.

A lot of work goes into writing a book, sometimes three months worth, sometimes six and very often a couple of years.  Gone with the Wind took seven years to write so I read somewhere;  how would you feel if you had spent all that time wearing your brain out, writing the best book you could, editing it, proof reading it, perhaps even paying for those services, only to have someone think they are very clever to buy it, read it, then return it for a refund for no better reason than that they can?

Whatever it is you do with your time, painting, needlework, knitting, or whatever and you found you could sell those arts because you are rather good at them, just think about how you would feel if you spent months perfecting something only to have someone claim a refund because they could.

It is not right, it is not fair and it is soul destroying for the author.  If you truly don't think the book was worth the money, if you can't finish it or think it is badly written, by all means return it.  But not because you think it is clever to read a worthwhile book for free.

I have often likened people who publish badly written, grammatically incorrect, badly spelled, punctuation challenged twaddle and think that's ok, to bad dog walkers who don't bother to pick up their dog crap.  Other people leave it there, after all?  It gives us all a bad name and so does self publishing rubbish and expecting people to pay good money for it.  There is even someone trying to sell the questions and her own answers to a college exam, and wondering why no one wants to buy it.

I liken people who abuse the refund system as thieves, no better than shoplifters.

Amazon's self publishing program has given readers access to some very cheaply priced talent that they would not otherwise have ever seen.  Treat that talent fairly and there will be lots more;  abuse it and it will disappear.

 

 

How much of a novel actually gets read?

There is always an argument among authors about how many words are entitled to be called a novel.  Back before self-publishing, most traditional publishers insisted on between 150,000 and 250,000 words and I have noticed that traditionally published books are getting tediously long.

 

While it is what is expected of War and Peace, I have found myself flitting through pages and muttering Oh, for God's sake get on with it!

 

I do not want endless pages of description, or irrelevant snippets from a character's past which have nothing whatever to do with the story.  When I write, there will be descriptions, but not two or three pages of them and I won't go into anything which is not relevant to the story being told.  I leave out the bits which I would skip over anyway.

 

My shortest book is Mirielle at 34,000 words.  I would call it a novella.  My longest is The Romany Princess at 80,000 words.  Most of my books are between 50,000 and 60,000 words;  the estimated number of pages on the Amazon website is misleading as they are, in fact, quite a bit longer and that estimate seems to change if I edit and re-upload at all, so it is best not to pay too much attention to it.

 

Off now, to take the baby bears out. 

Atelier Sommerland - Thank you

MAGIC!

I am posting this to say a big thank you to Atelier Sommerland, a young German artist who is amazing.

 

The picture above is one of hers and it is her artwork on some of my books, namely The Scent of Roses and The Wronged Wife.

I hope to use some more of her wonderful artwork in the future.  Her work is available to buy from most stock photo websites, but I think she deserves a special mention. 

Most of her work appears to be in the fantasy and magic genre and that is how it should be, because that is what she is - magic.

Free offer - 18th and 19th May only

Summerville Secrets, the fourth book in the Summerville Journals series is being offered free tomorrow and Monday.  I am doing this so that people can get a glimpse into the lives of the Summervilles and hopefully want to read more.  Please give it a try;  if you like historical romance, you will enjoy it - at least I hope you will.