Amy’s Comments (group member since Jan 15, 2017)

Amy’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

We’ve been discussing it on the Grrr thread. It doesn’t affect me other than I was just about to look into pronoun but others are having to move books.

Me too.

I'm fairly convinced my arms would drop off if I tried to lift a sledgehammer!

I haven't finished writing both of them yet, but when I do I'll sort something out about logins here. I think Ted has two.

Oh right, I had no idea. I was on Amazon before I went to Smashwords for iBooks and I don't remember the Smashwords ebook mentioning a special request for Amazon. Interesting.

A brief survey of my friends and colleagues on Facebook is that the next two books should be published under my real name DJ Cooper. I really don't feel I'm losing anything by doing this. It's not like I made a name for myself with the first two books.

Well that's more sociable than my thoughts of issuing a gentle tap to the head with a ruddy great sledgehammer. (Not that I could wield one!)

So why is Amazon an option for distribution that I opted out of if they can't distribute there? I haven't looked for a while, maybe the dashboard is different.

I sold an ebook to a fellow author this month :-)

700 is the number of free books I gave away this year. I now have a review, thanks to Sam.

My gravestone that I'm not planning to have will say Amy J Hamilton/DJ Cooper she didn't sell books.

(I keep saying I don't sell books because firstly it's true, secondly usually when I keep typing things like that I'm proved wrong. It's not bloody working!)

I used to use alcohol to deal with parties. I don't get invited to any these days, so I'm blissfully unaware of how I'd cope. I have a feeling I'd still use alcohol lol

I could have earnt £2.50 from that article it had pictures and evryfink.

I think you're right Carole, everything moves. It's been the same in two other industries I've worked in. Nothing stands still for long.

I hope genre doesn't matter anymore because I don't seem to be able to stick to one per book.

Only wondered because I'm in the UK and I've read a lot of things on these groups over the months that make me wonder whether aspects of this industry are different depending on which part of the world you happen to live in. I'm not an expert on anything. I couldn't begin to list the things I don't know, it's terrifying, but I learn new things every week. So I'm torn between wondering if things are different or if I just didn't know them.

I think with the sheer volume of material a publisher receives I wouldn't stand a chance. The closest I got years ago was from an erotic romance publisher suggesting I write for their free section. Cheers. So I was good enough to submit work to them and bulk out their website for free, but not good enough for them to take me on as one of their paid authors. I understood their reasons, but I'd also read some of their books and found myself equal in ability. The English teacher at secondary school told me that the only reason I wouldn't get into drama college wasn't because of lack of talent because I had that in spades, it would be because my face didn't fit. She was right. My assumption will always be that I may achieve something, but it will be via some backdoor somewhere and never the easy way in. That's a lie the closest I got to being published by someone else was a pet care magazine in the late 90s which accepted my article but three months later sent all the material back because the magazine had folded. lol

That’ll be a virtual one while I hide in a corner.

It can’t make things worse so I may just have a reinvention.

Thanks. Unfortunately it’d take a media blackout of all reporting of the Hollywood and UK political sexual abuse scandals for that to happen. A survivor of sexual assault relives the trauma every time one of these stories breaks. It’s a bastard situation but I’m mostly strong enough to deal with it.

Anyway I’m still thinking DJ Cooper for the next two books and everything else that isn’t erotica. Besides my real name sounds cool like that.

I’m being truthful. £2.99 is a good price. £2.49 was what KDP select wanted for Modified when I released it. And that was them suggesting a price for erotic weirdness. No reason why you can’t get £2.99.

I’m still here... I’m struggling with... non-writing stuff.

Anyway, yes, you’re right Helen. I absolutely have a writing style. It’s what almost got me picked up by a trad. Only almost. But I still have a hunch distancing these books from the erotic ones won’t hinder me. I am so far from being known I might be better getting the next two onto virtual shelves with a gender neutral name.

If the first two had been any other genre than erotica I’d be tempted to keep the same name. There is such, how can I put this... I want to say snobbery, that may be too strong a word, towards erotica, to be associated with them for a new genre may not help me.

Ugh don’t know.

Well you’re worth more than 99p anyway. If you can put in a price that’ll mean you’ll still get something per book-it’s not the end of the world and it gets you over a hurdle.

Do they charge a fortune?

Actually right now I could just give up completely. Or just give up trying to make it work and just write and publish and be invisible for the rest of my life. I'm so sick of the BS in life right now.

Speculative Fiction was a new term to me a few years back. It's not one I've ever heard my brother use. He's almost 7 years older than me and has been reading what he calls sci-fi or science fiction for over forty years. He's not a writer, he works in IT.

I certainly wasn't aware of the preference for SF. Not that I would stand a chance of ever submitting anything to a publisher for a couple of reasons, none of them due to a lack of writing ability. So I doubt this is something I have to worry too much about with my fictional mashups. The list of things to know about hashtags for Twitter quotes #scifi, I might need a new list. It would certainly buy me a few more characters to use #SF. Twitter is not my forte.