POST PUBLICATION - THE EARLY DAYS.

Whooba! There's the cover of my book displayed on the mighty Amazon and I'm being advised, quite heavily, to get reviews. So I purchase a dozen copies from the publishers and send them to friends. Your friends aren't going to say your book stinks -well some of mine might, that's why they're friends - and after a few weeks I have some good, and honest, reviews. That's when I start looking at other people who have recently published and notice the subtle distinction Amazon makes by stating the review is either from a 'verified purchase' reviewer or it isn't. To me this means my friends reviews are slightly discredited. I then notice that while I get reviews on Amazon.UK they don't show up on Amazon.com. I am, of course, puzzled by this. I can't ask friends to write two reviews but I need them on both sites.

I join Twitter. I join Facebook. I join writer's circles. I plug my book. Suddenly I start getting a lot of emails from companies offering to review my book, favourably, for a small fee -25 euros a pop and it occurs to me that there's a market out there made up of anxious writers who want to see their book survive, maybe even succeed. In fact there are legions of websites and companies offering to help struggling writers. None of this has got anything to do with writing. It's about how to succeed and success is measured by sales. It doesn't matter what your product is, if it doesn't sell it's a failure. Best Seller means what it says. It has nothing to do with quality.

I didn't write my book with the thought of making money. I wrote it because I wanted to write it and write it the best way I could. When finished, and only then, did I decide to publish. Since taking that decision bits of my life have changed into something I don't really like...an involvement in.the dubious world of self-promotion.


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