UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

I have recently started a blog My Fantasy Life to allow me to scatter random thoughts and poems to the Internet's four winds.

I noticed your blog doesn't have commenting enabled. You're not going to have much fun that way.

But it is probably better if the last thing you really want is comments.

The quoted 1* Top 1000 reviewer is very easy to find, except he/she/it doesn't use his/her/its name.

Thanks for looking!

It is supposed to allow comments without going to the trouble of registering as long as you provide a name and e-Mail address (which should not be shown to other users). If it still wouldn't let you comment, please can you let me know which post blocked you so I can investigate further?

Sorry. I didn't follow far enough: if you select individual posts, the comments are available by scrolling to the bottom.

My bad.

Alicia wrote: "... The quoted 1* Top 1000 reviewer is very easy to find, except he/she/it doesn't use his/her/its name."

You can't have much of a life if you are able to spend enough of it writing sufficient reviews to become a Top 1,000 reviewer.

Thanks for reporting back about the comments.

Well, I was procrastinating from writing, and curious. The book only had 5 reviews, and is several years old - 4-5* and the 1* (I believe).

It seemed like going after ants with a sledgehammer. I didn't answer your question of why this book, or what the author might have done to call down wrath (there are plenty non-satisfactory books). And then, as often happens, the story petered out...

I see he has a dozen or so books out, the latest one from late 2018.

I went back and did the Look Inside for Source, and found a very talky, info-dumpy Prologue - but competent mechanics (spelling, punctuation, no typos). Not as bad as many books.

And now I really must stop procrastinating, take nap, and write. Fun following this through with you.

Alicia wrote: "... I went back and did the Look Inside for Source, and found a very talky, info-dumpy Prologue ..."

It gets better.

BTW, someone has spoken up in praise of 1* reviews. And accused me of cowardice for not posting them myself!

And on a completely different subject, I notice you have adverts on your blog. May I ask how much money they make?

The ads on my blog are things Wordpress adds - without me having the slightest control over them - because mine is a free blog.

To get RID of ads, I'd have to PAY.

I just ignore them. Are they in an intrusive spot? I've never looked at my blog from a mobile, and if they show up first, it would annoy any readers.

The only thing a 1* review is good for is showing you probably have not bought ALL your reviews. One is advised to suck it up and ignore bad reviews. Which I mostly do - and I would never grouch about them in public.

But I work very hard to find readers who are interested enough to read a mainstream indie novel, and who have been rather flattering - and then along comes one of these little few-line reviews with a low rating...

Add a couple of others which I can only describe as passive-aggressive, and it's enough to make a sensitive author withdraw from the marketplace.

If I would have posted a 1* review - basically, 'this book has no redeeming qualities' - I think that it is obvious, and don't bother. Any potential readers should always examine at least the Look Inside for a few pages, and if the book is really bad, it will show that in the sample. We don't trample on that kind of authors; it's mean - and shows the pettiness of the reviewer.

I don't think you're a coward, any more than I am - we don't shoot fish in a barrel. We have some manners.

I don't worry about getting a few. It usually indicates someone chose to read without doing ANY due diligence, and then is mad at me because she can't read. I may be layered and complex in characters and plot, but I'm not weird or experimental (ergo, mainstream).

If you'd like more, let's take it off line.

Alicia wrote: "The ads on my blog are things Wordpress adds - without me having the slightest control over them - because mine is a free blog.

To get RID of ads, I'd have to PAY.

I just ignore them. Are they in..."

I don't think you see the ads on your own blog.
It's the wordpress business model and how they make money out of 'free' blogs. They collect the advertising

I know - but I hope someone will look at my site on their phone, and tell me if the ads come first.

On the desktop, the ads supposedly are inserted at the very end of posts.

Alicia wrote: "I know - but I hope someone will look at my site on their phone, and tell me if the ads come first.

On the desktop, the ads supposedly are inserted at the very end of posts."

On the mobile, there is a thin banner advert at the very top of the page, then your Blog Title, then a sunrise/sunset photo, then the (pinned?) post heading, then the first first 6 lines of the first post, then a large block advert, bigger than the photo. On my mobile, most of this block advert is off the first screen, but as I scroll down it becomes very intrusive.

But note that I may notice the adverts more because I use an effective ad-blocker on my desktop.

My blog is Wordpress, but I'm using a hosting service rather than the free Wordpress.com option. The hosting itself is about $30 a year and allows me to host multiple websites (e.g. to support my son's wedding) but the URL's are on top of that. The vanity URL davidmelvilleedwards.com costs the equivalent of $15 per year.

Thanks for checking - that was nice of you.

I was afraid of that - intrusive ads on the phones. I use an adblocker on the desktop, and rarely use the phone for anything other than phone calls - imagine that.

I don't see ads on the desktop, but figured that's because I'm the blog owner - never even thought of checking Adblock there; will do.

I'm determined to make the writing pay for itself (that's how much confidence I have in its eventual success, though the pump may need to be primed more); if I had a bunch of books, I'd create a proper paid site. I bought my domains - and a couple of extras I still pay for (for maybe $15 total a year for a bunch), and pay Wordpress so PridesChildren.com isn't prideschildren.wordpress.com.

I need to keep writing. The first novel has a good set of reviews I'm delighted to have (and a small number of negative ones), but I'm extremely slow, and will never have many books. There will be a push when NETHERWORLD comes out, and again for the third book.

I love everything connected with writing and publishing - and didn't mind learning it all. Marketing, however, holds no charm, and I resent the time necessary to learn it, and don't enjoy the skills. Because I'll be lucky to finish the planned trilogy, and a few books beyond that, maybe, I won't use the marketing skills enough to be worth the time spent acquiring them.

Haven't figured out how to get around that conundrum yet, but I'm quite sure I will eventually. (Big ego.)

Hello World! I've added some poems since last week.

And now I appear in someone else's blog ... Debbie de Louise spotlights David Melville Edwards's The Spirit of the Age. And I'm entered in the Allauthor.com Cover Of The Month Competition! What a busy life I lead!

Good luck on the cover competition.

Alicia wrote: "Good luck on the cover competition."

Thankyou! But with 287 other covers in competition, the odds have to be stacked against me, even if I had a fistful of aces up my sleeve.

David wrote: "... even if I had a fistful of aces up my sleeve."

Which of course I do ...

Back to the subject of this thread, there's more poetry. It's nice to be able to sign something off as complete after 14 lines.

Alicia wrote: "... Marketing, however, holds no charm, and I resent the time necessary to learn it, and don't enjoy the skills. ..."

I suspect it is Sales you dislike rather than Marketing. Marketing can be quite high-falutin'; product, position, price and promotion and all that. Sales, on the other hand ... "gi'us the dosh"!

Nope. Definitely marketing. Getting your book 'out there.'

Using opportunities to push it.

Facing the 'how do I get away from her' expressions (am I sure - or is it my imagination).

Unfortunately, I know the feeling, from being the recipient of other authors' pushy attempts, which make me cringe. 'No, dear, I am not interested in your photocopied poems.' 'Oh, interesting. You write memoir? How interesting!'

I'm very supportive of authors in general, but there are so many kinds of writing, and I'm barely interested in my own!

My generation was brought up to be modest and unassuming - lest we get swelled heads - and my mother did her job well.

Alicia wrote: ... My generation was brought up to be modest and unassuming..."

The most expensive upbringing imaginable, guaranteed to foster the impression of "a modest little woman with much to be modest about" in everyone you meet.

Whilst your ideal may be to be dragged kicking and screaming backwards into the limelight, the limelight is essential, and inertia guarantees you at least your 15 minutes of fame if you boldly step in to it.

Accosting people is definitely Sales, not Marketing!

All except finishing school.

My desire for a PhD in physics was a fly in the ointment.

How can it be sales when I'm not selling? I'm personally persuading people to read - and offering them an easy free version to read (paper) or sending them an electronic ARC. Some have gone to Amazon to buy, but very few.

These people, in my new community, will be asked to be part of my book launch and possible 'street team.'

I aim to have a big party here when the second and third books are each finished. At my expense. Just for the fun of it.

Alicia wrote: "... How can it be sales when I'm not selling? I'm personally persuading people to read - and offering them an easy free version to read (paper) or sending them an electronic ARC. ..."

Errr, O.K.. When I accost people I try to get them to pay for it before I offer them free review copies. After all I'm asking for less than $4 US. Though sometimes they say they'll buy it, but they don't :(.

Alicia wrote: "My generation was brought up to be modest and unassuming - lest we get swelled heads - and my mother did her job well.


..."

My mother was generally of the opinion that a lady's name would appear in the newspaper three times.
The first was when her delighted father announced her birth.
The second was when her father announced her marriage.
The third was the notice of her funeral

Basically of the three she would only be even partially responsible for one of them :-)

Ah, yes. We women were supposed to be content with that.

I've already been in the New York Times - in an article about people making the choice to move into a facility like ours.

Had my New York Times photoshoot and all.

I hurriedly put it on the bucket list and crossed it off.

Now I am greedy: I want one as a writer.

Alicia wrote: "... Now I am greedy: I want one as a writer."

It's a characteristic of the age we live in, when being a professional computer gamer is an actual thing, that you can easily create it yourself. Is this not what Blogging is all about?

And now for something completely the same. Sandra J. Jackson interviews me for her blog, and I manage to avoid repeating anything I said to Debbie de Louise.

We now have Prime Minister Boris Johnson; lucky us. In celebration I have put fingers to keyboard, and can bring you Eton Mess, or The Ballad of Theresa May.

I don't know what to say. May he be better than ours?

David wrote: "And now for something completely the same. Sandra J. Jackson interviews me for her blog, and I manage to avoid repeating anything I said to Debbie de Louise."

I'm always looking for authors to review for my website at www.ritaleechapman.com. Interviews are posted for a week and I've been doing this since 2013. Not a huge following but every bit helps!

Anyone interested can contact me through the website.

Alicia wrote: "I don't know what to say. May he be better than ours?"

Well, you get a chance to change yours next year. I reckon we'll get our chance before then. Our mop-haired conman with help from his friends in the (mostly right wing) press is spouting popular and uncosted policy positions and engineering a crisis so that there can be an election in the autumn. It's all bullshit of course. He's a better campaigner than Theresa May, but he's not as smart as he likes to think he is, and I think under the pressure of an election campaign he will come unstuck.

Rita wrote: ... Anyone interested can contact me through the website ..."

Thanks, will do!

Rita wrote: ... Anyone interested can contact me through the website"

Rita, your questionnaire is sitting under this window as I write.

My book cover came 24th out of 288, thanks for asking. I was lying 6th until they docked me 500 votes which had not provided an e-Mail address.

Finally, this week's poem is a family-related rant. I'd be interested to know whether I am articulating a universal truth, or whether I am uniquely oppressed.

I made an attempt to investigate who reads my stuff, and apparently thirty percent of my readers reside in the former Soviet Union. What is going on?

I cannot imagine that they're all bots, it may just be that you've somehow hit a seam of readers from that part of the world
About a third of my readers come from India, which I put down to some Indian bloggers who like my work and share it (and also take part in book tours for me)

Jim wrote: "I cannot imagine that they're all bots, it may just be that you've somehow hit a seam of readers from that part of the world."

That is a very charitable view, for which I thank you!

always look on the bright side of life :-)

Boris Johnson is proving to be as useless as I'd expected, and an election seems imminent. He's going to frame his pitch as "People versus Parliament", which begs the question, in our Parliamentary Democracy, when no government can bind its successors, just how long exactly should a Referendum Mandate last? Leave voters were generally older than Remain voters, so at some point we would expect living Remain 2016 voters to outnumber Leave voters. Since we don't allow dead people to vote, I've had a stab at working it out.

The mandate of a referendum lasts until the next generation where if the electorate care enough,they'll destroy those who ignored them
If they don't care enough, they won't

Jim wrote: "The mandate of a referendum lasts until the next generation where if the electorate care enough,they'll destroy those who ignored them
If they don't care enough, they won't"

I don't think most MP's have ignored the result of the referendum. If things had panned out as the Leave campaigners claimed they would (wonderful new trade deals, no downside, just a considerable upside, etc., etc.) opposition would have melted away. But life hasn't turned out like that. The Deal is crap, and No Deal is worse.

David wrote: "I don't think most MP's have ignored the result of the referendum. If things had panned out as the Leave campaigners claimed they would (wonderful new trade deals, no downside, just a considerable upside, etc., etc.) opposition would have melted away. But life hasn't turned out like that. The Deal is crap, and No Deal is worse.
..."

It doesn't really matter what we think. I suspect the next election may be a motion of confidence in our whole political class.

Reverence reaches new heights as I am interviewed again, this time by Rita Lee Chapman.

Once again I manage to avoid repeating myself!

And now some more poetry, Sensory Overload and In Praise of Extraneous Detail.

Today is National Poetry Day, so in its honour I've posted another poem One Love Manchester.

The alert reader may notice that some of my links have changed. The reasons for the changes, and their effects, will be the subject of my next post.

Waving my anti-Brexit flag on Twitter, I met a pro-Brexit SEO Consultant, David Law who was kind enough to offer some free advice. Two weeks ago I acted on his advice, with the consequences out-lined in the following blog post, The Benefits of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Another poem: Mum's Alzheimer's Disease Progresses.

Alzheimer's Disease sucks :(.

David wrote: "Waving my anti-Brexit flag on Twitter, I met a pro-Brexit SEO Consultant, David Law who was kind enough to offer some free advice. Two weeks ago I acted on his advice, with the consequences out-lin..."

'The Benefits...' is not a working link.

Alicia wrote: "'The Benefits...' is not a working link."

Thanks for pointing that out! I'd somehow deleted 'href' from the hyperlink. It's fixed now. David Law has added some further insights in the comments.

Thanks. My brain refused to put in the effort - I should have googled it myself.

Alicia wrote: "Thanks. My brain refused to put in the effort - I should have googled it myself."

That would have been a good test of my Search Engine Optimisation efforts!