My first book has been on sale at the Amazon kindle store for over a year, and although nobody ever bought a copy it somehow managed to get its first review, and it was 1-star! Bummer!
All I can guess is that my wife found out and did it to get me to give her more attention or somebody must have downloaded a sample and decided it was nothing like what they thought it would be. (Most likely as it was in the wrong category.) Anyway, without any comment attached to the review, or anything else I probably won’t be able to give it away until it gets a ton of 5-star ones to balance it. Yes, I could just ask friends and family to do that, but it would be a bit dishonest, and would also reveal my secret Bruce Wayne identity, so I was not holding out for any change soon. Once I understood the problem, I fixed it by removing the book off Amazon and going through the process of splitting it back up into three books and fixing the classifications etc, a journey that will no doubt continue for a while.
It is however a tad disappointing after almost two years writing it and ten years procrastinating before-hand, but I guess the book was not normal, being quite long at 370,000 words, and not really fitting any particular genre. The reason for both was that it was actually three books not one, sort of a slow start Sci-Fi, that progressed from today’s technology and politics, through the singularity, to a space-based utopian culture (Did I say over 3 books!). A typical sci-fi reader is just going to see a story about two girls and a slow build up of their fortunes and not much in the way of sci-fi, and someone who enjoys that is going to see the book change as it gets a bit more darker and political and finally almost 100% sci-fi by the end. I guess in hindsight the internet was dead-right, keep your books short and just write sequels! (Another lesson learnt!)
There are several reasons I am not getting angry at the world. Firstly, I am not that kind of person. This apparently happens a lot according to the information I can find, I guess I’m just lucky my livelihood does not depend upon it and I really feel for those who this happens to where that does matter or they don’t have such broad shoulders; Yes I have lost 99.99% of my potential (tiny) audience, but I still love the book and the characters, so I can only hope that one day in the future someone will take a chance on a 1-star book and enjoy it as much as me and my test readers did. Secondly, I am really enjoying the writing journey, and for the past twelve months since finishing the book I have been working on my second novel, another one of those bubbling in my head for just as long, and over the past two months I have finally finished and polished it into another I am quite proud of.
So, Mehhh! I decided to release it anyway and under my same (hopefully not too tarnished) author name. Like the previous novel, the launch won’t be with any fanfare, and I won’t be telling anyone about it unless they ask. I won’t bother with any publicity (other than here and maybe HN where it will get flagged as something dodgy and never seen). And I won’t be jumping through any of the crazy hoops you need to get it listed within the first 500 search results. The reason is simple, this gig is purely for me. To me it is like doing one of the great New Zealand walks, it’s about the journey, being able to say you completed it, and having some small anecdotes with which to talk to people you meet.
So, will I write a third novel? Hell Yes! Writing novels is an awesome and very cheap hobby to have. It is enjoyable, deeply personal, very self-satisfying, and saying you wrote a book still raises an eyebrow (or maybe a laugh now!). I will also still also keep up my other interests, electronics, computing, walking, diving and maybe whatever comes next (pottery, clog-dancing who knows!), but all of those kind of pale to looking at your bookshelf and knowing two of them are yours.
The novels will stay at their current modest price on-line, as I am hoping that if someone actually pays money that they may actually be inclined to finish them! But it is not, or has ever been about the money, otherwise I would have asked everyone I know to review and like them, and most people who know me don’t even know I am a writer. However if the idea of paying for them is abhorrent to you, then just drop me an email saying hi, and if you don’t sound dodgy, and it does not go into my very aggressive spam folder, I will send you the Epub files so you can email it to your kindle or sideload to your other e-reader, or you can ask your local library to get it in for you it is on the overdrive/libby store that they all use.
