Sales in July

          It's the 31st today. In July I sold eleven books. Four of these were for Are You Boys Cyclists?. Perhaps this is because I mentioned in a forum that it was mommy porn! Who knows? I'm surprised to be selling any.
          In June I sold eight books. In May I sold seven. This month I had all this free book promo time and kept putting the books up for free. I don't know if this helps, but why anyone should buy my books anyway is beyond me when there's so many out there for free!

TheBlissBook! Nice review!

          I just found this review of TheBlissBook. Nice since it got a lousy one before!

          Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars I loved it! 11 July 2012

By A Happy Reader

Format:Kindle Edition

I am not Scottish, and I'm not familiar with some of the Scottish slang which was in this book. However, that didn't alter my enjoyment of the story and the plot. I am also a teacher in a secondary school, although I teach in England, so I could relate to some of the things which the author was talking about (though I haven't quite resorted to killing any of the Senior Management Team..)

The clever blend of humour and educational material about Buddhism really impressed me, because the two seemed to fit well together. As I said, I had to sometimes think about what some of the slang meant, but I got the general idea.

Overall, I thought this was a very funny read, and it is a good book if you're just looking for a quick read and a few laughs.

          Last week I had TheBlissBook up on the free book promotion. In one day it downloaded sixty times in the states. You'd expect it to download half of that in Blighty normally, but TheBlissBook was downloaded only ONCE and that at half eleven at night when the downloader was probably drunk. This has to be because of the lousy review it got from some idiot who doesn't know the difference between fiction and non-fiction. The disparity cannot be for any other reason that I can think of. I'll be able to tell for sure when I put up Ancient Futures on the free book promo. That picked up a lousy review from someone complaining about the editing when I think there was something amiss with her reading device. Oh well. It's a free world out there in cyberspace and it's populated by loonies of course.

Alma Mater

Promoting ebooks again!!

          Last week I had to clear some of my old junk from my mother's house and came upon the parcel you see in the photograph. This is the original copy of Alma Mater. I was writing this from the age of about twenty two till I was about twenty six, then I put it down again, took it up after trying to write other stuff, put it down again .... as you do! I think the first draft was half a million words long, but I decided to re-write it by  cutting out the first two years of university and it went immediately from half a million to a quarter of a million words. A brilliant piece of editing!

          The travails and circumstances the re-write was done in are told in Are You Boys Cyclists? This book is FREE to download today.

           I've been trying not to look at my Reports on the publishing site, but I did today and I have only sold one book this month. Last month I sold eight, with three being at the rock bottom price, the others at $2.99. I decided that I'll have to avail myself of the free book promotions again since this is really my only marketing tool and I can put books through these promotions without having to spend too much time at the computer. I have ten books on Kindle so that gives me fifty days of free promotions. I guess that means something from me will be free for the next wee while on five out of every six days. Right now I'd rather they were getting read than not.

Are You Boys Cyclists? review.

I found this four star review of Are You Boys Cyclists? this morning.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 Highly entertaining... but beware! 3 July 2012

By J Bryden Lloyd

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am ashamed to say I thoroughly enjoyed this.

This book contains violence, graphic sex and drug use. But far more than that, it is the story of a writer seeking inspiration from his life, and seemingly realising he might have to look elsewhere.

A word of warning... No, nothing to do with the sex and drugs and stuff... This was written by a genuine Scotsman. A man with no pretence of going out of his way to use "The Queens English", or any other English come to think of it.
That, above all else, endeared me to this book. I grew up in Scotland and the dialogue, the characters, the humour, the familiar words I've not heard in years - they all just made this what it is. (I even found myself reading this in a scottish accent - Do you know how disconcerting that is?)

Whatever your nationality, this is the sort of book you can easily enjoy. Yes, there might be the occasional word you don't understand, but honestly... look through the little things and a wonderful story of life emerges that will make you giggle (at the very least).

P.S. Would love to know what happened to that car at the end!