Really annoyed

 I'm really annoyed at myself.

I had a plan for publishing and promoting my book ("Norman the Insurance Salesman and Other Stories" - catchy, I know!), which was to make it live at the start of May, and before that I'd send advance readers copy to my targeted list of awesome people, and hopefully that would result in some reviews and some promotion to try to kickstart sales.

All that changed when the other day I clicked Publish on the eBook instead of scheduling it first.

The issue with this is that Kindle don't (understandably) allow you to distribute your eBooks outside of the Kindle Store and Amazon if you're signed up to their Kindle Select programme - which I am.  So while I can still tell people about the book, and give them copies of the sample pages Amazon put on their website, I can't send anyone the full book in electronic format.

I could buy physical copies and post them, but that's an outlay I can't afford right now.  So the reality is that I'm not going to be getting the reviews and the buzz that I was hoping for.

It's bittersweet - I'm really annoyed at myself, because it's my mistake, but also I'm really excited to have my book out live - except it isn't fully live, because of me trying to fix my mistake, the eBook is now back in review status and not actually purchasable, while the paperback and hardback copies are (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F2884VMF) so I'm now waiting until the eBook is back fully live too and then I can do my promotion. Effectively I'm doing a "soft launch", which in my experience is when someone logical tries to do marketing - and it doesn't work. But I'm hoping that I'm wrong!

It's still fun. Writing a book is something I've always wanted to do, and it feels great to have done it. It's just not how I was hoping it would go! But that's life for you I guess :)

Anyway - expect to continue to hear from me more book-related stuff!

Are You Mike Raven?

I've just completed Are YOU Dave Gorman? a book, unsurprisingly by Dave Gorman & Danny Wallace.  In a nutshell, as a result of a drunken bet Dave Gorman travels around the world meeting other people with his name, in an effort to find and meet 54 of them, dragging his flatmate Danny along for the trip.  I love these types of books - Googlewhack and Round Ireland With a Fridge are two others that spring to mind - where an immense amount of effort is put into a bizarre task.  No, that's wrong - a quest.

There's something about a quest that appeals to me, going out and doing something.  And although I don't feel able to go and do something like this myself, I can live through their books a little.

I must go and watch Yes Man.

And I feel a session buying Kindle books coming on.

Putting reading aside, I've also made my first attempt at a YouTube video, this one is of me doing a brief review of Realm of the Mad God.  It's not very good, but I learnt a lot from making it.  I need to speak a little slower and clearer, and I need to have more of a script when I'm reviewing a game rather than recording a session playing the game, and then talking over it (which is essentially what I did).  It's important to create quality content, even if it takes longer to do.

If you still want to view the video, it's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgzDWRtWRfY

Apart from that, it's been a quiet day - I'm currently not feeling too clever with a very sore throat so I'm going to go back to bed, where I've been most of the day! Night!