Mark’s Comments (group member since Jun 11, 2012)

Mark’s comments from the Q&A with Margaret Sharp.' Long and Short Australian Stories' group.

Felicitations, Margaret! I really like the cover photo.

Congrats! I'd retweet the tweet, myself (is that something one can do with tweets? I'm very unornithological), but for my lack of a twitter account. Still, it's nice to get recognition, all unbesought, in twitterworld, and speaks to some genuine appreciation of your work.

Jeanette wrote: "Margaret wrote: "Just noting that, early next year, we hope to publish another book of romantic vignettes: similar to 'Long and Short Australian Stories' but without the very long ones. :) No name,...I look forward to it."

Me, too.

I have the feeling there may be. My sense is that there may be one spontaneous review for each ten sales. In your case, because of the uplifting nature of the book, I'd hope for more.

Margaret wrote: "Off at a tangent, perhaps, but I'm happy to note that my fifth book, '60 Questions, Insights and Reminiscences', has made the Amazon Kindle Best Seller List! It's presently around number 126,000."

That's remarkably good, since there are >1.5 million books available on kindle. Puts you in the top 8%. Do you know how many copies have sold?

Have just posted on Danske Læsere, "Jeg er lige startet på Long and Short Australian Stories af Margaret Sharp," so who knows? Perhaps you'll get some orders from an unexpected venue. :)

Thanks, Margaret. Perhaps kindle's publishing software has developed some occult, lurking, artificially unintelligent copy-editing gremlin. It really is the strangest thing...

Brenda - Thank you. It really is kind of you to ask. I've been dealing with several medical issues and may be AWOL intermittently for a little while yet, but for the moment, I'm awake and typing. No unreasonable warranties of lucidity are ever express or implied, in any case. : )

Sorry about my confusion. I've been ill and very preoccupied, must have misread your earlier post. The table of contents definitely *is* present in Long and Short Stories. It's just not hyperlinked to the stories themselves, which is not a big issue. I had thought you were referring to modified text in the ebook I have (L&S), rather than in Taste, which of course I have in the paperback, non-virtual edition, so I can't check any ebook anomalies, there. The problem with the missing cover on L&S has been rectified, so that it now does appear both on my kindle shelf and within the ebook, itself. For them to have added copy to Taste really is bizarre, but I hope they'll act quickly to fix it.

I looked at my kindle app and tried to figure out what had been altered, textually. Did they actually add the line, "hastily, and a little shakily, I put down my utensils and joined the men?" (That was at the end of the segment numbered "7" in bold, but unless there's an exact correspondence there, it's actually impossible to tell from the presentation on the kindle app *anything* about the original pagination.) They also haven't troubled to give you a table of contents, so it's hard to access the stories, other than sequentially. I can understand their misrendering the spacing -- I think they just run the text through a mindless formating program with its own algorithm -- but it's absolutely incomprehensible to me how they could have added or deleted actual copy. I don't believe they employ human editors, even for best sellers. You should definitely complain about the changes. One book doesn't matter to them, but adverse word-of-mouth on GR very well might.

OK, have now obtained through my kindle app. (That was easy!) :)

Felicitations! I'll have to get it, now. :)

I honestly think you'd get much broader readership (especially overseas) if you went to kindle format. It's just so easy to obtain books on kindle. Between the nook and the kindle and audible apps, I have, currently, about 550 books on my phone, and thus have them with me at all times. (I wouldn't preclude porting the books to nook, either.) You're eminently deserving of the support, by the way, and I'm sure Jenny feels the same.

Oh Margaret, honestly, you don't want their support. You want the support and readership of people who like Australia, but aren't deluded enough to think that Aussies all sound like Paul Hogan. There's no shortage of those, at least among Americans who read.

Oh, just about anyone not fond of grief and despair (or vampires; there are obviously a paucity of vampires :)).

Say, Margaret -- I obviously love your work, as is evident from my review (of A Taste of Life and Love, though I intend imminently to read this book, as well), but in that my first reaction was, "this ought to have a wider audience," Nicole's question ignited a thought (probably by kicking over an indolent neuron) -- which was, "why not make it an ebook?" Just wondered if you had thought of it. Would your agreement with your publisher preclude your doing that independently, or is not really of interest, or am I just living in a virtual reality of kindles? (Your book is one of only three I've purchased in paper form in the past two months, whereas I've read about 20.)

Hi, Margaret,

In truth, as an American currently residing in a superposed quantum state (I think it's called "Texas"), I definitively qualify as "overseas," relative to you, so let me hasten to say that I harbor (note the missing "u," certifying that I am an actual American) no preconceived linguistic expectations whatsoever of a book from Australia, other than that it probably won't have been written in Urdu (it would be okay if it were, though; I just couldn't read it). It certainly doesn't bother me if the book contains, or doesn't contain, instances of Strine. (Is it okay to say, "Strine?" I've never said it before, but that's what I've always thought Australian lingo was called. Most Americans, on the other hand, have always thought Australian was called "Spanish" or "Martian." We are a deeply confused nation.) Anyway, I think you need not be concerned about the people who expect your books to sound like Paul Hogan movies. They do not read. Books. (They are quite adept at deciphering aspirin labels, though.) My general thought is... no worries. (I understand that that's an Australian locution. We don't say it here, possibly because we're unremittingly worried.) All the best!