Yea! After three days, they finally fixed it.

And of course I'm in the top 100 of three categories, as expected.
Thanks everyone!

This time it's Amazon issues

Sometimes I can't win for losing. The new book is selling well, it's ranked about 3400 overall on Amazon right now and will hopefully continue to get lower numbers. BUT Amazon is NOT ranking the book in it's categories. When it fell below 4000 it should have shown up in the top 100 of all of it's categories. BUT they're not ranking it.

Why? No idea. So I sent them an email at 6am
Then at 12 noon
then again at 3:30.

Nothing. Without it getting ranked, it won't show up in the top 100 lists, which or any other lists, which is the Amazon promotion that gets other people, who haven't read my stuff to read it. It is a key part of the Amazon sales demographic. And Amazon isn't doing it for me, and they're not fixing it. This will kill the entire launch if not fixed soon.

I am so screwed. Again. Obviously the universe doesn't want me to be an author anymore.

Edit:

Here's a picture of the relevant stuff to show that yes, I did it right:

Portals of Infinity: Kaiju (Book 7) is now available on Amazon

It went live very late last night and is now available:

Portals of Infinity: Kaiju

Cover for POI: Kaiju

Here's the cover, expect to see the book up for sale by tomorrow:

Got the rough draft on the cover this morning

I love my cover artist. This morning he sent me the concept sketch for the cover. Really like the way it looks! Won't be surprised if he has it done Monday. He's really good on getting my covers turned around rather quickly.

Did a proof read edit today. Got back a bunch of questions/comments/critiques from the first of my beta readers, tomorrow I'm going to read and address those. Hopefully I'll be hearing from the others by Monday so I can have this all ready to roll out as soon as the cover is done. I'll be in Reno next weekend, so I very much want this book published before I go.

Cover for Book 7 has been comissioned

So, just waiting for my artist (Dane at ebooklaunch.com) to get back to me with the initial drafts on the cover. That could be anything from tomorrow until Tuesday, depending on how busy he is. I'm fairly certain I'll have the cover by the 12th, he's very dependable.
Hopefully my Beta readers will have gotten back to me by Monday, and just as hopefully there aren't any major flaws that I've missed.

So maybe I'll be lucky and I'll launch on Friday the 13th! :-)

With the way this month has gone, that may not be a bad thing.

Still waiting on getting my money back. They'd originally said 'five days' and well, it's five days and nada. Maybe I should go into bank fraud for a living, it sure pays well and I bet you don't even have to declare your income to the feds!

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed, and hopefully I'll be able to launch next week.

Oh, the title!

Portals of Infinity : Kaiju

Not sure when POI #7 will be out.

I was going to start the 1st re-write today, but between having to run to the credit union across town, then to another branch, then out to buy a battery to replace one that turned up dead on Sunday, it's been a very busy day. Maybe I'll be able to start tonight.

Part of the problem (well most all of this stems from the same issue) is that with my bank account getting hacked during what was a very short month income wise is that I have to wait until all of this settles out and some of the funds start coming back before I can commission the cover.
Then I have to wait a week for the cover to be finished.

So it really depends on how difficult it is to recover money stolen via a debit card, it's not like a Credit Card where the money never goes through, Debit Cards are almost instant, so you have to wait for the bank to get the money back. Or at least decide that they will eat the loss and pay you back for it. Hopefully that will only take a week.

I wanted to have this out well before the 13th, as I'll be away that weekend. Right now, that may still be possible, but it won't be easy.

-John

It should be legal to kill people who forge your debit cards

Yup, got hit today, lost $1000. Hopefully the bank will return it to me, as it was fraud (they didn't even steal my card, they made a duplicate. See how well those chips work?) Of course now I have to hope that I get enough money back so that the bills I paid on Friday don't bounce.

Also, I hope I get the money back in time to be able to commission a cover by my artist, who is money up front. I was going to do that tonight or tomorrow, but not enough money in the bank anymore. As my bank doesn't open until Monday, I can't get a new card, or access my money at all. Good thing I keep some cash around the house or I'd be totally tapped out.

This is the second time in 30 days I've been ripped off. Last time was a credit card. Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just unlucky, or if someone has decided to pick on me. All in all, it really sucks.

POI BK 7 nearing completion

Well, except for one 'act' or scene (and it's a major one) the first draft is complete. Right now it's a bit over 72K words, tomorrow I'll tackle that one last part, and see where it stands. There will be a lot going on in that remaining part so it could possibly be close to 5 K words.

Once that's done I'll probably leave it alone for a day or two, and then start on the first rewrite. That will probably take until Monday or Tuesday. Possibly a bit longer. Then I'll leave it alone for another few days before the second rewrite, then it will be off to the editor. So not exactly sure of the date it will be ready, but I think it is safe to say it will be ready prior to the 15th of next month.

POI Book 7, still untitled

As usual, still don't have a title, honestly this is the first time I've even thought of a title for the book.
It's almost to 65000 words, I'll probably pass that tomorrow. Not quite sure how big it is going to be, I suspect somewhere north of 80K. Right now I'm hoping to be done by Wednesday, part of that depends on if I can get to 70K by tomorrow night. If it ends up running longer word wise, then it will take a few more days of writing. Working on one last plot point, a minor one. All the rest is pretty much ironed out.

So, Depending on turn arounds for my editing the drafts, my editor editing the final copy, it may by out by the 14th.

I think I will be at BLFC in Reno

So, BLFC is in Reno in 3 weeks. I volunteered to do a panel on self publishing, because I have a presentation that I've done before and I really should start trying to get out to conventions. I actually like BLFC and have been there a couple of times before, I go to Reno semi-regularly, because it's close, and because the air races take place there and I go to them.

The reason why I'm not exactly positive about what's going on yet, is because the con isn't positive about what's going on yet. With only three weeks to go, they still haven't told me if I'm doing that panel or not. They still haven't put up a panel schedule. So I don't know if they haven't made any decisions yet, or if they have made decisions and just not informed me of the fact.

There will come a point where if they tell me I'm doing one, and it's too close to the date, I'll have to tell them I won't be able too. Because I do need to do some work to get the presentation in shape, but I'm not going to waste time on that, if I don't think I'm going to be doing the presentation. Because I'm about six days from finishing the first draft on the current manuscript, and I need to keep cranking on it, if I want to get it done and published soon.

So, not sure what's going on. I think I'll be there Saturday, regardless of what happens, but as for other days, well Friday still looks like it will be out, and Sunday does look possible.

Oh, What the Experts Say....

Lately I've been hearing a lot of stuff out of 'experts'. Now some of this is my fault, as I have been soliciting advice in a few places, but the sad thing is that so many of these experts are really only an expert in one place:

Their own mind.

There are others who do offer helpful information at times, but when they start trying to tell me something that my own experience flatly denies, well, I have to wonder if they're looking at the same thing I'm looking at. Because I know what they're saying just won't work.

I also am a little worried when people point me to 'experts' who haven't had the same level of success I've had. In that they'd had a lot less, and not more.

All in all, it's been pretty frustrating, and in the world of indy writing there is ALWAYS another shyster coming along with their 'give me X dollars and take my course and I will tell YOU the secrets of success!'. Yes, some of the people selling courses do seem to know what they're talking about, especially in their genre of writing. But all things are not equal, and I'm not forking out $500+ for a course from somebody who writes detective thrillers for a primarily female demographic, when I don't write for those people.

Somewhere out there, there is a better way for me to get in touch with my audience.
I just wish I knew what it was. It definitely isn't facebook.