goodreads

All posts tagged goodreads

A damned lie

Published October 27, 2012 by Sandee

Hey everybody wish me luck. Tonight I’m having an author reading from my home-made book, Mean-Spirited Tales.  I’ll read two regular “mean” stories and part of one horror story in honor of Halloween.  It’ll be at a local café.

My friend came by the other day.  He told me that he finished my book.  I asked him if he saw any errors in it and he said no.  I did catch two in the Kindle version, before the hard-copy was published. I fixed them though.  It would’ve sucked worse if there were errors in it after I had paid somebody two hundred and fifteen million dollars and ninety nine cents to edit it.  I’ve seen this before – books from “reputable” publishers with errors.  I saw a mistake in An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.  I wonder if Brock Clarke saw it.  It made me not feel so bad about the errors in my home-made book.

Before I published my book I read this WSJ article about another home-made book that did really well.  So I did the same thing this author did as far as advertising, etc.  I might have missed something though, because hers sold a gazillion copies – ha!  She said she didn’t spend more than $1500 I think.  I spent less than that.  Let’s see, she bought a review from Kirkus – check – she bought an ad on Goodreads – check – but I swear I don’t remember her saying anything about an editor.  I did have friends look at some of my stories.  The one published in Calliope, Night Terrors, only needed a couple of edits for clarity so I thought I had a handle on editing, although ‘they’ say never edit your own stuff.   Ah but bunk it!   Maybe I’ll do it for my novel – hire a cute boy editor.

Of course I’m one in the legions who harbors a fantasy that my home-made book will be the next self-published success story.  Aghh!  At this point I’m just happy that people are reading the book that I wrote.  No that’s a damned lie.  I want to be the next self-published success story.

Blasted Widgets!

Published May 3, 2012 by Sandee

I don’t know how to make my Pepto Bismol colored blog look better.  I don’t know how to use the widgets.  Yesterday I tried to get the Goodreads widget from their site so that readers can click on my book which is advertised on that site.  It was frustrating.  I left messages for them but they haven’t gotten back to me yet.  I am the Luddite so I get frustrated with these technical processes.

I don’t have a camera or even a decent phone to take a half-ass photo of myself – forget about videos!  The picture above is one that my brother-in-law took of me and one of my fake sons.  My sister emailed it to me today.  It was partially cut off.  I’m going to Massachusetts to see my sister, her husband and my fake sons.  My brother-in-law used to have the camera in my face all the time and I hated it.  The pictures he took are of me frowning or shooing him away.  Now that this old Luddite has been dragged to the 21st century, and has joined the facebook, the twatter – I mean the twitter, and blogging, I need to have more photographs of me.  So I would like for my shutterbug brother-in-law to snap snap away so that I can put photos of me and my fake sons on my social media.  Yesterday I was so mad I wanted to throw glass, but I listened to this instead and felt relief: (More sick music for sick people, a phrase that I used for the title of my post the other day – I meant to mention that I didn’t coin that phrase.  I don’t like taking credit for shit I didn’t make up.):