About Tales From The Aether
This blog post is about my book titled Tales From The Aether, which was originally titled Bob The Potato And Other Stories.
Like all of my work released through Amazon, the major reason to release this at all was so that I could meet the requirements I was told by Harper Collins that I needed to meet in order for them to consider my novel, Children of the Crescent Moon, which is to have 5 books published in the last 2 years. They had told me that anthologies and even self-published books and short stories were okay, so I had thought that I could release my short story Bob the Potato and also my poem Hopelessness.
The plan had been to release Bob the Potato on the 30 year anniversary of its original release, when it was published as part of the Puffinalia magazine, where it won the award for story of the month for June 1989. My planned release date therefore was June 2019. I was then going to consider releasing Hopelessness on the 30 year anniversary of its release date, in the August 1989 edition of Puffinalia.
I knew that Bob the Potato was short, but, as far as I knew, Amazon had no minimum size on books, nor did they have a minimum price. So my plan was to release it as the 699 words, or 3 pages, that it was, and to set a price that is appropriate for that, which I thought was fair at about 5 or 10 cents. I thought I might go up to 20 cents but no more than that.
I thought that there was probably a market for that, for short reads that cost basically nothing, and I thought that I could hit that market, for people who want a quick read for something enjoyable. It sure was loved initially.
I was certain that it would get nothing but 5 star reviews, or perhaps the odd 4 star review mixed in, and maybe average 4.9 stars or so. I was also sure that it would get a lot of sales.
What I hadn't counted on were Amazon's inflexible rules.
Minimum price 99 cents, minimum size 25 pages.
Ugh.
It could be shorter than that on Kindle, but then, at least for my family and close friends, none of them even had Kindle so I needed to at least have a paperback version of it. They didn't care how much it cost.
So the basic plan was that my family and friends would buy the paperback and then people off the street would buy the Kindle version for 5 or 10 cents, or 20 cents at most.
When I found out that I had to charge 99 cents, I was tempted to abandon the whole thing, and, in retrospect, I probably should have. Of course, I had no idea what was to come, but I still knew that this wasn't right.
The thing is that I didn't have to release this. I had already made money from this. It was kind of cheating to re-release something that is already out there. While Puffinalia of June 1989 is no longer in circulation and was only ever available in Australia and New Zealand, you can still get a hold of it in certain libraries. For people who had bought the original magazine it was in, they would be kind of offended at having to pay for it again. That magazine sold for $8 per copy. Why would they want to pay another $1 just for me?
So I had the heartbreaking decision of whether to abandon it, or at least abandon releasing it in Amazon, or to do something else.
I could have gone Kindle-only, it should be noted, but then that's like a giant middle finger to my family and friends, since it couldn't be released on paperback without getting to the 25 page minimum. Even still, 99 cents for 3 pages is a massive rip-off.
So I decided to add Hopelessness to it.
The two don't really go together, as everyone who loves Bob the Potato hates Hopelessness and vice versa, but what else could I do?
And I released a third story, The Form And The Substance, which I had only written a month beforehand.
I felt terrible about it, as 3 stories works out at 33 cents each on Kindle, yet my price range was 5-10 cents. I was ripping people off really. I should have 10 stories really. I was just ugh.
Of course, I later did push it out to 7 stories, and 30 pages, and then changed its name to Tales From The Aether. I could have gone out to 10 stories but by that stage I couldn't be bothered with it.
"I never thought I'd end up hating a potato," was one review, which really summed it up.
This ended up being the subject of a smear campaign, one with three layers no less.
The first layer was to pretend that I had attacked someone criticising it as not being good, when in reality they (1) had not bought it (2) had not read it (3) had not criticised it (4) I had not responded (5) I had blocked them and (6) what they had written was a threat to destroy my writing career.
That was the first layer, resulting in 150 people writing abusive comments to me on Facebook, a mild annoyance as I had to press "block" 150 times.
The second layer was to start a campaign to downvote my book on Amazon, which resulted in: (1) 6 x fake 1-star reviews (2) 2 x fake 2-star reviews (3) 2 people changing regions from USA to UK just to write fake reviews (4) 2 fake reviews on Goodreads (5) Dozens of comments asking for people to downvote me (6) A genuine 5-star review being downvoted until Amazon incorrectly removed it.
Then came the third layer.
A fake blog post was created which mentioned me by name and essentially gave people reason to murder me, by making appalling accusations against me that were too nasty to write here. I go over them in some depth on my own counter-blog post here:
The Tale Of the Lying Writer
It was shared on Facebook by 560 people, with 2,000 unique visitors, and it resulted in Hydra Productions cancelling my contract with them to produce Karta as part of their Abhorrence anthology (originally created for Karta by Emily Piland), and Angela Kay refusing to finish her design for the cover for Tales From the Aether, in spite of charging me US $110 for it, money she took but refused to deliver on.
I also had someone try to kill me over it.
All of this so I could re-publish my much-loved cute and innocent story about Bob the Potato.
I never meant for this to happen.
If I had it to do again, once I found out that Amazon had too high a minimum page limit and too high a minimum price, even for Kindle, I would have cancelled the project.
I didn't need for this story to be re-published. I only did it to impress Harper Collins.
But does this really impress them?
If you do end up reading the book, let me know what you think, good or bad, but most importantly honest. I am beyond caring if this gets low reviews. With 8 fake reviews on Amazon, and 2 on Goodreads, it's not like fake reviews are going to hurt it either.
Tales From The Aether
Like all of my work released through Amazon, the major reason to release this at all was so that I could meet the requirements I was told by Harper Collins that I needed to meet in order for them to consider my novel, Children of the Crescent Moon, which is to have 5 books published in the last 2 years. They had told me that anthologies and even self-published books and short stories were okay, so I had thought that I could release my short story Bob the Potato and also my poem Hopelessness.
The plan had been to release Bob the Potato on the 30 year anniversary of its original release, when it was published as part of the Puffinalia magazine, where it won the award for story of the month for June 1989. My planned release date therefore was June 2019. I was then going to consider releasing Hopelessness on the 30 year anniversary of its release date, in the August 1989 edition of Puffinalia.
I knew that Bob the Potato was short, but, as far as I knew, Amazon had no minimum size on books, nor did they have a minimum price. So my plan was to release it as the 699 words, or 3 pages, that it was, and to set a price that is appropriate for that, which I thought was fair at about 5 or 10 cents. I thought I might go up to 20 cents but no more than that.
I thought that there was probably a market for that, for short reads that cost basically nothing, and I thought that I could hit that market, for people who want a quick read for something enjoyable. It sure was loved initially.
I was certain that it would get nothing but 5 star reviews, or perhaps the odd 4 star review mixed in, and maybe average 4.9 stars or so. I was also sure that it would get a lot of sales.
What I hadn't counted on were Amazon's inflexible rules.
Minimum price 99 cents, minimum size 25 pages.
Ugh.
It could be shorter than that on Kindle, but then, at least for my family and close friends, none of them even had Kindle so I needed to at least have a paperback version of it. They didn't care how much it cost.
So the basic plan was that my family and friends would buy the paperback and then people off the street would buy the Kindle version for 5 or 10 cents, or 20 cents at most.
When I found out that I had to charge 99 cents, I was tempted to abandon the whole thing, and, in retrospect, I probably should have. Of course, I had no idea what was to come, but I still knew that this wasn't right.
The thing is that I didn't have to release this. I had already made money from this. It was kind of cheating to re-release something that is already out there. While Puffinalia of June 1989 is no longer in circulation and was only ever available in Australia and New Zealand, you can still get a hold of it in certain libraries. For people who had bought the original magazine it was in, they would be kind of offended at having to pay for it again. That magazine sold for $8 per copy. Why would they want to pay another $1 just for me?
So I had the heartbreaking decision of whether to abandon it, or at least abandon releasing it in Amazon, or to do something else.
I could have gone Kindle-only, it should be noted, but then that's like a giant middle finger to my family and friends, since it couldn't be released on paperback without getting to the 25 page minimum. Even still, 99 cents for 3 pages is a massive rip-off.
So I decided to add Hopelessness to it.
The two don't really go together, as everyone who loves Bob the Potato hates Hopelessness and vice versa, but what else could I do?
And I released a third story, The Form And The Substance, which I had only written a month beforehand.
I felt terrible about it, as 3 stories works out at 33 cents each on Kindle, yet my price range was 5-10 cents. I was ripping people off really. I should have 10 stories really. I was just ugh.
Of course, I later did push it out to 7 stories, and 30 pages, and then changed its name to Tales From The Aether. I could have gone out to 10 stories but by that stage I couldn't be bothered with it.
"I never thought I'd end up hating a potato," was one review, which really summed it up.
This ended up being the subject of a smear campaign, one with three layers no less.
The first layer was to pretend that I had attacked someone criticising it as not being good, when in reality they (1) had not bought it (2) had not read it (3) had not criticised it (4) I had not responded (5) I had blocked them and (6) what they had written was a threat to destroy my writing career.
That was the first layer, resulting in 150 people writing abusive comments to me on Facebook, a mild annoyance as I had to press "block" 150 times.
The second layer was to start a campaign to downvote my book on Amazon, which resulted in: (1) 6 x fake 1-star reviews (2) 2 x fake 2-star reviews (3) 2 people changing regions from USA to UK just to write fake reviews (4) 2 fake reviews on Goodreads (5) Dozens of comments asking for people to downvote me (6) A genuine 5-star review being downvoted until Amazon incorrectly removed it.
Then came the third layer.
A fake blog post was created which mentioned me by name and essentially gave people reason to murder me, by making appalling accusations against me that were too nasty to write here. I go over them in some depth on my own counter-blog post here:
The Tale Of the Lying Writer
It was shared on Facebook by 560 people, with 2,000 unique visitors, and it resulted in Hydra Productions cancelling my contract with them to produce Karta as part of their Abhorrence anthology (originally created for Karta by Emily Piland), and Angela Kay refusing to finish her design for the cover for Tales From the Aether, in spite of charging me US $110 for it, money she took but refused to deliver on.
I also had someone try to kill me over it.
All of this so I could re-publish my much-loved cute and innocent story about Bob the Potato.
I never meant for this to happen.
If I had it to do again, once I found out that Amazon had too high a minimum page limit and too high a minimum price, even for Kindle, I would have cancelled the project.
I didn't need for this story to be re-published. I only did it to impress Harper Collins.
But does this really impress them?
If you do end up reading the book, let me know what you think, good or bad, but most importantly honest. I am beyond caring if this gets low reviews. With 8 fake reviews on Amazon, and 2 on Goodreads, it's not like fake reviews are going to hurt it either.
Tales From The Aether
No comments have been added yet.
