Just Books

Beware Amazon Book Rankings!

Beware Amazon Book Rankings!

If you are a reader, or a writer, you probably use Amazon book rankings at some time or another. Even if you are a bookshop owner's dream and buy your latest reads locally, the chances are that you do your research online and, therefore, on Amazon.

And why wouldn't you?

'What could be wrong with that?' you might ask.

The answer is: nothing, as long as you are aware of some of Amazon's weirdest policies.

I will come clean here, and say that I am a writer, and I know many writers, just as you know many people in your profession, trade occupation or hobby. I have about 175 books on Amazon and other online book retailers, and I have been doing it for about six years.

A few years ago, I forget how many, but let's say three or four, the powers that be in Amazon decided to attempt to wipe out the widespread practice of 'sock-puppet' book reviews. Some unscrupulous authors, literary agents and publishers were buying a book on a false account and then leaving a gushing review about it.

They might do this a hundred times or more - at least enough times to boost the said book into the Amazon book rankings top-ten charts, which would ensure that it sold significantly more.

Beating Amazon Book Rankings

Buying hundreds of books was beyond many independent authors, so they might just open dozens of Amazon accounts in false names, or get their friends and family to write reviews for them. I'm sure that you can see what I am getting at.

You see, many, many readers choose their next read from the top-ten lists.

So, in attempt to combat this, Amazon decided to spy on authors' social media accounts and delete any GOOD reviews from people that the author knew.

This is a bizarre method of dealing with the problem, because those who use fake accounts won't appear in anyone's friends list. On the other hand, many authors, myself included, end up becoming friends with some of their readers.

I could name six or seven right now off the top of my head - people I correspond with, but have never met. So, I (and they) have two options: either to pretend we don't 'know' one another like secret agents in a comedy show, or let Amazon do its worst.

I choose the latter, and consequently have lost well over a hundred reviews on just my flagship novel, Behind The Smile.

It is a silly policy, but it also means that the top-ten lists that many people choose their books from are inaccurate.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Beware Amazon Book Rankings!

A Life in Twenty-Two Kilos

A Life in Twenty-Two Kilos

Forty-four kilos is the average luggage allowance for a couple flying abroad - twenty-two kilos each. That is how much you can take with you, even if you are starting a new life – even if you are emigrating. It is the airlines' norm. I can see why that is and I have no argument with it.

However, that is from the airline's point of view.

Two years ago, my wife of twelve years and I left Thailand for Spain to start a new life there. It was very exciting and a great triumph, because it had taken us a lot of effort to get the correct papers together for my Thai wife. (They included a WHO health certificate, a certificate from the Special Branch that she had no criminal record, plus marriage certificates etc - all in Thai, Spanish and English and certified by the Thai authorities).

However, the most difficult thing by far was choosing the twenty-two kilos of luggage that we each wanted to take with us without paying for any excess. I suppose it was a little easier for me than my wife, because I had moved from the UK to Thailand with my twenty-two kilos twelve years previously, and with the exception of a blood-pressure monitor and updated clothing, I took the same things back to Europe with me. However, it was very difficult for my wife.

It was a question of clothing for her, and I know that she sneaked some of her stuff into my bag.

Now, we have been here for two years and she has a heap of extra clothes, shoes and accessories to choose from. My guess is that she will need to leave about three-quarters of her stuff in a local charity shop.

So, if you were to move abroad, whether it be forced or by choice, do you know which twenty-two kilos of your stuff are most important to you?

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: A Life in Twenty-Two Kilos

MPS Blog Reaches New Heights!

MPS Blog Reaches New Heights!

May 2018 was a record-breaking month for my MPS blog in terms of readership figures. The blog, which strives to inform readers and writers about the easiest and or best ways of doing things, continues to go from strength to strength. We almost reached 10,000 pagereads last month!

The record-breaking statistics are: unique visitors up by a whopping 83% from 5,365 to 9,818; total visits up by 39% from 29,618 to 41,397 and total pageviews up by 34% from 164,208 to 221,315. Visitors are spending an average of 7 mins 22 seconds per visit.

This means that there has never been a better time to book advertising on the MPS blog. There is a range of advertising opportunities designed to fit most needs. They range from interviews and reviews to banner advertisements in most of the common dimensions, and links.

The MPS blog is primarily for SWAMP people (sculptors, writers, artists, musicians and painters), and people who appreciate them, but there is nothing to stop firms that service them promoting themselves on the blog as well.

However, the leading advertising package is the Set and Forget 365-day Ultimate Promo Pack, which has just been enhanced with two extra posts and the resultant podcasts!

Check the deals out on the title bar at the top of this page or click this link:

Megan Publishing Services Blog Advertising Index

All the deals on the MPS blog are implemented by me alone, so there could be a slight delay. If you want to co-ordinate a promotional package with a special event – like, say, the release of a novel, please book as early as possible and I will try to fit you in.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: MPS Blog At New Heights!

Arrival in the UK

Arrival in the UK

We had planned our arrival in the UK three months in advance and had bought flights accordingly. I had asked friends and family to look out for accommodation for us and spent a lot of the intervening time researching procedures and looking for possible immigration problems and their solutions.

Two days before our actual arrival in the UK, my brother, our fall-back in case we were homeless, informed me that we would not be able to stay with him. I rushed to reserve a hotel room, but they could not do that without payment. However, I didn't want to pay in advance because there was a reasonable chance that my wife, being Thai, might be refused entry.

When the day came, we flew from Malaga into Barry. At Immigration / Passport Control, the official said that he had never come across a case where an Asian married to a Brit was carrying a Spanish Residency Card. After a few worrying minutes, during which he talked to his superior, he called us over. He wanted to see her passport and residency card, and then gave her leave to stay for six months.

So far, our arrival in the UK was going better than we had hoped for, except for accommodation. A taxi took us to the hotel and, unbeknownst to us, we took the last room in Barry. Apparently, a festival in Cardiff and a Rolling Stones concert had caused every available room to be taken for the following week. They could accommodate us for two nights but no longer.

So, at eleven am, ninety minutes after our Arrival in the UK, we set off looking for the next place we could move to. Despite many helpful suggestions, we were out of luck, and so went to bed a very worried couple.

The following morning, we trawled the remainder of my old haunts and asked several taxi drivers, but everything came up blank. As we were walking forlornly past a pub in town, a man standing outside smoking said, 'Hello, O, long time no see!'

It was someone I used to know twenty years before, but I had forgotten his name. I asked whether he knew of any lodgings, and he took us inside for a think. Anyway, he offered us his spare room which would become vacant after five days. We leapt at it.

Now we only had five days to cover.

Homeless in Barry

However, his assistance didn't stop there. He and his wife insisted on taking us around all the guest houses they could think of. Needless to say, they were all booked solid, so we retired to a pub to think again.

'You can have our bed and we'll sleep on the couch', was their solution. We were flabbergasted, but had to accept after offering to sleep on the couch ourselves.

'I'll tell you something,' he said. 'I only stopped at that pub to smoke a cigarette with an old friend and that was only the second time I've been in there in eight years!'

So, there we are now, and I am sitting on the couch writing this. I can't wait for our own room, so that they can reclaim their bedroom.

Such acts of kindness are truly humbling, especially when I still haven't had even a simple email from any of my family asking whether we are still homeless or even just all right!

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Arrival in the UK

Liverpool vs Real Madrid

Liverpool vs Real Madrid

It was Liverpool vs Real Madrid in some football cup final or other in our local pub in Fuengirola this evening. Well, I suppose it was in nearly everybody's local too. I am not really into football. However, many of my friends are at various levels from professional to fanatic, so I try to take an interest in the most important games.

People started to arrive early to ensure a good seat and the tension was rising ever higher as it filled. Normally, the clientele is predominantly British and Spanish, but this night it was French and Spanish, although they were split fairly evenly in their support. However, more people seemed to be talking about the game than watching it as far as I could see.

There was never a hint of animosity, even though the noise level was quite deafening once the game got going. By the second half, I think that everyone was supporting the Spanish team as I didn't notice any sad faces when the game was over.

Football and Me

The Liverpool vs Real Madrid match was the first football match that I remember watching in the last five years, so, as usual, I didn't really know what was going on. However, I do enjoy the atmosphere, and the Spanish really love their sport, so watching any football game in Spain is a flight of emotion. There were fans of all ages and both sexes in the bar and everybody was shouting their team on.

Free food and cheap drinks ensured that everybody had a wonderful time. I would be watching again, but it was the last game of the season, so I'm told. It seems that I catch on too slowly.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Liverpool vs Real Madrid

There Be Demons

There Be Demons

by M. K. Theodoratus

Review by Barry Boy

There Be Demons by M. K. Theodoratus is a (Contemporary) Fantasy Fiction written in the third person and set in a city called Trebridge on a world called Andron, where most people are human. However, demons and imps led by the evil Lord Vetis and his somewhat silly lieutentant, Abraxus, have plans to invade, for which purpose they have established at least one seep, which is like a worm-hole, from their world into Andron.

The main seep is in a soon-to-be demolished cmmunity church called St. Edmund's, and it is closely guarded by four gargoyles, who are sworn to protect mankind. Nevertheless, these protectors of humanity still require human help and this comes in the form of four teenage school friends led by a wilful girl named Britt. The head gargoyle, Gillen, is very concerned when his promised psychic reinforcements are just teenagers.

Britt and her friends study at a school run by nuns on the poorer side of town and the nuns play a role in the ultimate battle with the evil ones who seek to possess them. The penultimate scene us the battle between the human and the demon teams.

There is a correlation between the society, the church and the religion in There Be Demons with American society and the Christian (Catholic) Church, and it is interesting to match up the parallels.

I thoroughly enjoyed There Be Demons even though it is not my preferred genre. I thought that the characters were well drawn, and that the book's title and cover were appropriate for the story. It is also well written, and well, although not perfectly, edited, which can easily be corrected.

If fantasy stories are your genre, I am sure that you will enjoy There Be Demons by M. K. Theodoratus. I would read a sequel. Well done, Miss Theodoratus, full marks in my book!

M. K. Theodoratus - Author

M. K. Theodoratus

1 Name M. K. Theodoratus

Website www.mktheodoratus.com

Blog http://kaytheo.blogspot.com -- Fantasy Thoughts from My Easy Chair

2 Country USA

3 Do you prefer to read a particular genre? I mostly read various forms of fantasy or mystery books, though I read other stuff too.

4 Do you write in the same genre? If not which one? I write fantasy since I never could break my "make-believe" habit. In reality, I'm a hermit who doesn't interact much with the outside world anymore, so creating fantasies where I can ignore the intricacies of the faddish world work best for me.

5 Have you always written and what got you started professionally? Started writing in the sixth grade when my teacher introduced me to the concept of me creating my own stories on paper. Have written since then. I sold mostly non-fiction. I didn't start getting ending on most of my fiction until I retired. Writing keeps me busy and out of mischief.

6 How many books have you published? There Be Demons is the only book I've published, but I do have a list of several novellas and free short stories set in Andor. Once There Be Demons had a contract with a mom & pop publisher and I tried to build a platform for them. Must say the reviews for all of my available stories are decent.

7 Which one would you like to tell us about? Actually, I'd like to mention the There Be Demons sequence. The whole thing started with an idea about how would a gargoyle protect a city. Night for the Gargoyles was born, featuring Gillen as loadstar, and sold to Spectra Magazine, a defunct ezine out of the UK. But I kept wondering how Gillen would cope trying to teach the headstrong teen-aged girl he admired. There Be Demons was born. While I shopped it, I wrote On the Run set in the same world. The sequence runs: Showdown at Crossings, Night for the Gargoyles, There Be Demons, On the Run, and Rendezvous with Demons, if it gets written. [Rendezvous is about 30,000 words of sloppy notes and some chapters at the moment

8 Why did you write this book book and what is it about? See the book review here: There Be Demons

9 Book cover and ISBN/ASIN: ISBN: 0999203908 - ASIN: B075Q6KJST

There Be Demons

10 What would you like your next book to be on? It's a little complicated. I have edits of a Far Isles Half-Elven novella in my computer I'd like to finish. Then, I don't final edits on the sequel/stand-alone book titled On the Run. Then, I'm working on a new book is a possible trilogy. The working title is Rendezvous with Demons, featuring Britt/Cahal and Pillar/Nate plus other characters facing down a demon team of Vetis/Grylerrque.

11 If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you go and why? My back yard. It's relaxing under the trees watching the birds and butterflies do their thing. It's my favorite place to read though I read mostly in my comfy chair in the living room.

12 What is your favourite foreign food? I don't do favorites--either books or food. It all depends on my mood. Mostly I cook plain American, Mexican, and Greek.

Tiger Lily Audiobook

Tiger Lily Audiobook

The Tiger Lily Audiobook, or the audiobook of Tiger Lily of Bangkok to be more precise, one of my novels, has been in the pipeline to be be published on Audible, Amazon and iTunes for weeks, but nothing seemed to be happening with it...

They said that it was 'under review' for audio quality.

That is, until last night. I got up in the middle of the night because it was so hot and decided to do a little work to get me back to sleep as it was only four a.m. I noticed that the Tiger Lily Audiobook had been approved and put on sale. After checking my email, I went back to bed and slept for a few more hours.

At nine, I returned to my post after breakfast and was amazed to discover that my Tiger Lily Audiobook had sold six copies!

The truly amazing thing about this is that there had been no advertising whatsoever. In fact, Audible and the others don't give authors notice of when their books will be going live, which makes prior promotion difficult and they don't support pre-orders either.

So, where did those six customers for my Tiger Lily Audiobook come from?

How did they find out about it?

I doubt that I will ever know, but I do know that Tiger Lily of Bangkok is a good story that is narrated so skilfully by Annya Strydon, so I hope that they enjoy it. I also hope that they read this article and discover that I appreciated their buying it so quickly off the mark.

If you would like to see what the story is about that created this buzz, and perhaps get a free copy yourself, just click this link:

Tiger Lily Audiobook

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Tiger Lily Audiobook

Jailed - Locked In, But Locked Out!

Jailed - Locked in, but Locked Out!

At six o'clock yesterday evening, I decided that I wouldn't go to the local pub for a drink, as I usually do, but that I would get a few bottles from the off-licence and carry on working, as I have two audiobooks to approve, which is eleven hours' work. I had no idea that I would soon be jailed up!

So, I put my sandals on and took a bunch of keys off the shelf nearby. They weren't my normal set, but I assumed that my wife had taken mine and left me hers. I put them in my pocket, closed the door behind me and descended the outside staircase to the street gate below. However, the smaller key would not throw the bar on the grilled gate in the four-metre high street wall.

I went back upstairs for another set of keys, but the larger key would not open the door to our apartment either!

I was trapped on the outside, open staircase, between the street and our apartment. It was the closest to being in gaol that I have ever been. The floor area of the small yard is about two metres by two and from the floor to our door is about two and a half metres.

It would be at least three hours before my wife got home, and it was already getting chilly. I searched my pockets for my own keys, but nothing. So, I contemplated Tweeting a friend to phone my wife, but none of my friends are on Twitter that I know of. I tried Facebook, but it didn't recognize my password. Then,I tried to install Skype, but Google informed me that none of my registered devices was capable of using it. I don't know why they thought I was trying to install it on a machine where I wouldn't work!

I was truly beginning to feel jailed at this point, but I was also feeling rather frustrated.

Jailed Like An animal in a Zoo

I could see people walking past through the gate, but I didn't know how to ask them to help me. I didn't even know what they could do!

Anyway, after an hour, the people across the street arrived home, and sat outside their front door, as is their custom. They could see me jailed up, but were too polite to say anything, although I was sure that they were talking about me.

Now, they don't speak English, and my Spanish is minimal, but after twenty minutes, I tried to explain. The husband took my keys and tried them in the lock.

"They don't work", he said handing them back and walking off. I used my tablet to look up the word for 'landlord', and pointed at next door, where he lives.

He tried, but Jose was not at home. "Phone your wife", he suggested helpfully. So, I asked him for his phone, which his wife gave me.

My wife arrived five minutes later and let me out, but when I thrust my hands into my pockets as I walked off, I felt my own keys. They were in one of the hip pockets, which I never use. God knows how they got in there, or why I hadn't found them earlier. My mother always said that I never looked and I had been jailed - locked in, but locked out for two hours proving her right!

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Jailed - Locked in, but Locked Out!

Facebook and its Spam Detectors

Facebook and Its Spam Detectors

I don't know whether you have been a victim of Facebook and its Spam Detectors (a.k.a. spambots) recently, but they are giving me a lot of gyp. For example, Facebook and its Spam Detectors used to force me to fill out its questionnaire and change my password about once a month, but I have had to do it four times this week.

There are two aspects that I find particularly annoying about this. 1) the parameters of the questions are always the same eg, they ask, "Did you befriend Bill Jones?". Why do I have to answer that exact same question four times in a row? 2) Then they send a message saying, "If you requested a change of password, you need do nothing". However, I requested a new password only because they had blocked my account until I did!!

Facebook and its Spam Detectors are definitely the most annoying aspect of my online life ghese days, although Twitter is catching them up quickly with its silly three-day rule. I suspect that both of them are punishing me because I won't give them a phone number. Why not? Well, firstly, I don't have a phone, and secondly, they don't need my number. Who do they think they are? A bank oe an investment company?

They are just glorified chat rooms with superiority complexes, who are also surreptitiously collecting ever more data on their users to pass on to the security forces and private business sectors.

Well, I feed them incorrect data... I like things that I would never buy, just to screw up their algorithms, and I won't give them my correct address or even country of residence sometimes, despite their geo-locators. When I see that they have tracked me down, despite the fact that I have have told my browser that I don't want to share my location, I change my place of residence to somewhere else. Sure it means that ads are not relevant, but so what? I don't want their stuff anyway.

Many people are finding that their posts are being deleted from Facebook. However, you can rail against this by challenging their decisions. Under Help on the top right of the screen, find Support Questions and click it. It will give you a lust of all your posts that it blocked, although it won't tell you why. Click that you don't agree with their spambots and a human will be made to check it. I do this every day, and I am hoping that they will Whitelist my account one day. If you don't challenge them like this, you are accepting their robots' right to judge your account, and I find that the thin edge of the wedge.

I urge you to keep an eye on Facebook and its Spam Detectors too. Don't let them get the last word or before you know it they will be running the show - they already think that they do :-)

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Facebook and its Spam Detectors