Sales!

         For the first time in some months I have been able to access my Kindle account. This has nothing to do with the Kindle folk who have been wonderful. But computers make me nervous and sometimes I get annoyed and if I have a problem, I'd usually rather not attend to it at all. However, I got a change of password today and could look at sales. Of course, I got the first royalty payment of £10:88 on Friday, so it was good to have a peek just now.
   
         I think all ten books have only been up a month or so, and the prices were changed to rock bottom (86p or one dollar will get you any of these books!) maybe a month ago.

         29 books were sold from March to October, so that's about three a month. However, this month 15 have been sold already. All my books are selling in dribs and drabs, which is fantastic. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't doing anything. Nobody had a chance to read them, good or bad, and the fact that they are now able to read them is totally excellent!

First Royalties!!

          I was amazed today to see in my emails that Kindle were sending me £10:88 in royalties. I really did not expect to make any money putting my ten books on kindle, especially since I had the idea that the royalty payments were triggered after you'd had hundred dollars worth of sales. Well, it seems not. 

           The only "marketing" these books have had has been done on this blog, which is getting hit at the moment about once a day, and on Facebook. I've got under forty "friends" on Facebook and most of them are relatives! I've also sometimes tried to advertise them on the discussion threads you find on the kindle page, but I don't think you're really supposed to do that. And some folk don't like you doing it!

           So far the books have had only two reviews from folk I don't know. The ones that seem to be selling recently are Alma Mater, (which I don't think had sold any a couple of weeks ago), Remote Control , and The Real McCoy. I would have expected City Whitelight to sell the most since it was good enough to be published twice and was turned into a Monday Night Theatre on Radio Four

          I reckon I get about 26p for every book sold so I must have sold over forty books. That's forty more than I would have sold if I hadn't had them put on Kindle!! If you've bought one, thanks very much.

          There's only seven books listed on my Kindle page. There's ten on Kindle. Dearie me!

           

Review of TheBlissBook!

This review appeared on a friend of mine's blog this morning.

TheBlissBook is the first book I’ve read on my new Kindle.  It is by John McKenzie, and cost only £0.86

I read this book for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I wanted to see how easy it was to download a book onto the Kindle.  It was very easy.  Secondly, I know the author.  In fact, I was John’s line manager on more than one occasion when we both worked for Heriot-Watt University Library.  Thirdly, the lead character in the book is a librarian based in Edinburgh.  A school librarian, in fact, so fortunately it is not based on the author’s time with me in university, but rather on the librarian of ‘St Jobsies for de Boysies’ – a semi-fictitious, disfunctional catholic school.  I say fortunately, because early on, the school librarian’s boss meets a sticky end.

The lead character is a rather unusual school librarian – he is known by the pupils as ‘The Mad Librarian Who Can Stand on His Head’ and who, when he catches a thug kicking in the door of the library, grips him tightly by the collar and tells him “Do that again and I’ll pull your legs off, ya wee shite!”

There’s a lot of humour in TheBlissBook, and I chuckled to myself on just about every page.  Behind the humour is one serious issue – the sad state of many school libraries in the UK.  It all gets too much for the ‘Mad Librarian’, despite his Buddhist tendencies, and mayhem results.

If you have anything to do with libraries, you’ll really enjoy this book.  If you’re a teacher, you may be shocked by it, and want it banned.  If you’re a parent with kids at school, you should definitely read it.  If you’re a pupil attending secondary school, I guarantee that you’ll fall off your seat laughing at it.