there are some very interesting people out there in the world of authors - not all good. millions of books are being put on amazon, a thousand a day; it's rapidly coming to dominate the book market. as one who just plunks down $10/mo. for kindle unlimited (my only investment in the authoring gig), i now get to read all kinds of things in whatever order i want. i don't read the highest tier of books - they don't need to be on kindle unlimited - but i read some pretty good ones and occasionally i find up-and-coming authors like myself who write really good things and they're just floating out there - they need people to be reading theirs just as i need them to be reading mine.

so my main audience at this point is still other authors. i rely on them to read mine while i read theirs and it works out ok. but here are a few that i've found.

one guy has a kind of fantasy empire. he does a lot of d & d, and i think he has a lot of friends in that world. so he builds his worlds off of their worlds, and everyone loves it. he's a pretty good writer too, though he makes a lot of non-sentences, and that, to tell you the truth, drives me nuts. but i'm finding it a lot more common these days. people don't have much of a sense of sentence vs. non-sentence and they just belt it out there. he does well, though - has a huge fan base, everyone gives him fives, they wait for his last word.

i've read two vampire books in which the vampires were the good guys. i was totally surprised by this. but, both writers were good writers. i fell right into their thing, and i enjoyed them, and i came to like the vampires. now i never thought that was possible, or at least, at one time, i always thought vampires were the bad guys, werewolves too. but times change. it's possible to love a vampire.

there's one guy, had a stroke a few years back, has invested an enormous amount of energy into recovering. his mind, he figures, is what makes him or breaks him. he's quite a bit older than i am and still writing books. he just puts them out there, and i respect him for that. i actually like him more for the fact that he's a pittsburgh jew than for his writing skill, hope that doesn't give it away. but really i like him, and i admire anyone who can write a book six years after a crippling stroke.

i have a friend in england. she's about the best match for me, in terms of skill, i think. she's a good writer, and i've enjoyed everything she's written. in addition, due to the nature of what we're doing, we do get to communicate a little. in fact i need her, as i've written a book for my relatives that include that little area of england where she lives, which i mistakenly called "southeast england" (looks southeast to me) but which she would call "lower midlands" or some such thing. i need to get these things straight if i'm going to write non-fiction, even if it is for my family.

one guy, also british, wrote a book in which he accused over fifty people of conspiring to torture him and get him locked up in britain, for what appears to be the smallest of crimes. i can't figure out if it's a parody or if he really thinks they'd go to that much trouble just to get him. he seems to be a reckless sort - young, drifting from job to job, that kind of thing, but i readily believe him that he didn't really commit any crime against the state. so why would they go to this much trouble? i can't imagine. so i leave the book on my shalf and read others.

such is my life. life is short and i don't want to keep reading things i'm not crazy about. i've found some really really good authors - and i'll read theirs anytime - but aside from that, i'm saving what's left of my vision for the things i really like.

Tall Corn State

Tall Corn State

My new novel
Available on Amazon


For some reason, a promotion kind of like this (on Mar. 3) was flagged and deleted by blogger for violating its standards. I am not sure what standards they were talking about; it's a fairly simple ad, and only goes to Amazon. It was reinstated later, but not quite, as a draft. Still not sure what's going on; I think it was a mistake. Sometimes blogs get caught up in their general machinery and things happen.

SO, I'm not mad at Blogger; I'm not venting here; I'm OK. But I will keep trying ads like this. My book is good. I know you'll love it. Keep trying!

i've decided to be somewhat of a rolling stone; when marketing things don't work i simply move on to things that do work. but i'm a little obsessive about checking my ratings, sometimes every hour or two and actually sometimes they change in that hour or two. those ratings are not generally up to me. if i agree with someone to read all that's in my control is how much of theirs i read. meanwhile they may or may not be reading mine, or buying mine. very rarely buying mine.

one author actually showed me a totally blank screen - no sales for a month, and i told her, when this happens to me, i buy my own. which is somewhat true. i don't want to see a blank screen.

but now is better than most times; i have four books under a million, and i can buy a few if i so choose which would put a couple of the paperback ratings under a million too. the worst one is like seventeen million - no ones' bought that paperback for like seven years - but i think i'll wait, redesign the cover, and buy one of those for myself. boom, it'll be under a million, but will go back up soon enough.

when those ratings find their level they only increase by about 20 thousand a week, which, if you do the math, is about a million a year. that's the kindle ratings, which i'm more in tune to these days - who's buying the real books? no one, as far as i can tell. so i might as well take my time, redesign the real ones, but quick make the kindle versions good for the burgeoning kindle market.

i actually figure that people are reading more due to the pandemic. but they are buying less, and spending less money, due to the struggles from the crashing economies around the world. they may recognize kindle unlimited as a good deal at ten dollars a month (it is, if you read a lot) in which case, i need to find them and get them reading by books, all of which are on kindle unlimited.

but i'm tired of relentless marketing that seems to have very little result. sure, my ratings go from zero to three million now whereas they used to be six to eight when i got mad and decided to actually market stuff. i'm doing better now. i have a better sense of the market. but i still make only 20-30 bucks a month and spend hour upon hour refreshing the ratings.

also, i go through times like now where i'm kind of dry in the writing department. about ten projects on the desk and don't feel like actually writing any of them. some take research and i don't feel like doing that either. i read-exchange and i end up reading theirs, while they read mine - that's where my measly income comes from - but i'm not satisfied with theirs. i'd like to write the novel of the century but instead i sit here and watch the sun set slowly in the mountains. the puppy perches on my knees gruffing at the four-leggeds out in the woods.

one facebook word group post asked for the best novels of the last year - mine was not mentioned - but got about 120 responses which i copied down. that's my goal - that someone would just say this one is one of the better ones this year. as it is it's only been read what about thirty or forty times. i have a ways to get into the picture here and get my novel out there. but, patience patience, all things will come. if it's good, it'll get reread, i'm confident of it. i need to make novels that stand the test of time.