I was talking with a friend today and she was giving me some advise on marketing strategies. I mentioned that I often used a signature on my FaceBook postings that gave the web address of the location to buy my novel. She said that many people would be offended by that and block me. I have not found that to be the case. But it brought up an interesting question, if all is fair in love and war, is all fair in marketing as well? For example, I have joined several online book clubs under a pseudonym
in order to start conversations about my novel. Is that wrong? Its not like I am taking money from them or deceiving them in any way, except for my name, of course. If I can direct people toward discovering my book, I see no harm. It may not be the greatest novel ever written but it tells a good story and I have gotten very positive responses from those that have purchased it. Consequently, I see no harm in attempting to start a buzz about my work. There is so much competition out there that any advantage seems appropriate. I have also piggy backed onto celeb sites and book club sites and will post my web address whenever possible. My friend thought this was very rude. To me it is a public forum and if I can say something relevant to the topic and my signature pops up with the web address, I see no harm. I always see almost instant results on the dashboard page of the sales site. I also have a certain number of friends that have well over 1,000 friends on FB. I will periodically hit them with a "Shameless Plug" bomb. I tell them they have been hit with a "Shameless Plug" bomb and attach the web address. I have a relationship with these people and the permission to do this so it is not an issue. I have had no one, in the four weeks I have been doing this ever say anything about it. They have all been very supportive as a matter of fact. So I put it to you, is there morality in marketing in regards to using every means at your disposal to get the word out?

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/12052

Computers and mothers

Anyone that is over 40 will tremble at the combination of these two words. Computers and mothers. My mother is a lovely woman who just turned 80. I just spent an hour and twenty five minutes talking her through a download. It started out simply enough. I wrote a novel. It is in ebook form and my mother wanted to buy it. I told her I would just send it to her but no, she's my mother and she wants to buy her son's book. So, I began the journey toward navigating her to the book site. She lives in Tampa Bay, I am in Spokane. She is on a PC. I am a Mac guy all they way. My sister was nice enough to buy the laptop for her so I had not say in the matter. Why anyone would give an 80 year old woman a PC seems to be cruel and inhuman but that's just my opinion.
So, I navigate her to the Smashwords site that contains my novel. Now, she has to open an account. She fills out the form and hits enter. After several unsuccessful attempts she realizes that under COUNTRY she has listed Angola. Once this is corrected the account opens. Then I have to explain that the site wants to confirm her email before she can continue. We leave Smashwords and navigate to her email where she is amazed that an email from smashwords is waiting for her. Once we have her confirmed we are back at Smashwords to buy the book. She adds it to her cart....finally, "What's a cart? Why do they call it that?" She fills out her CC info, three times. In order to talk her through this, I have to log in under another email account so that I can step through with her on my computer. I end up having to buy my own book. Eventually, she buys the book.
Now we have to download the book.
Of the many options that we have to download I figure that a pdf will be the easiest for her to use. So, we attempt to download the pdf. On my Mac it is a fifteen second action. On her PC the question mark icon appears next to the Acrobat icon. She does not have the program. Instead of trying to explain to her how to download Acrobat I go another route. I have her download the novel as a epub file and plan on getting her an ebook reader. The e-reader is a free download at barnesandnoble.com.
Fifteen minutes later we arrive at the B&R site. "Yes mom, Noble is spelled with one b." I get her to the ebook section and to the download page for the e-reader. She then downloads the e-reader and this is where this goes horribly bad. I have no idea how to navigate the download on the PC. Where does she put it, how does it work? I am lost.
I finally find it on her desktop, which she did not know she had, and we attempt to open it. The reader takes us back to B&R where it asks her to open an account. OMG!!! I want to kill myself.
At long last I realize that I cannot find the e-reader on her computer because we have no idea where she put it and she has no idea what a hard drive is. My sister will be on a conference call with us tonight as we once again take up the battle, that I can promise you.
After I finally say goodbye to my mom, I check my Smashbook account to find that in the interim I have sold 4 more books and have had 6 new sample downloads. I am excited for a moment, then it hits me. Who wants to bet that in this process my mother bought my book 4 times?
All of this for a $2.99 book that I could have just emailed her. No wait, I take that back. We would then be back to the same issue, downloading and saving it to her computer. Computers and mothers. Is there anything more frightening?

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/12052

Today's rant is about the emotional climate of this country. It is my personal feeling that we are a nation divided by common beliefs. For example, whether you lean right or left, most people believe we need health care reform. Yet, no one can agree on how to go about achieving this goal. The fight began and soon it was not about health care reform or insurance reform, it was about which party would come up with the plan that gets passed. Get it passed and be on the team that passes it. That is all that is required for a win. If you were on the "losing" team you are now filled with righteous indignation that the President used his power and influence to unilaterally force this bill upon you when "no one" wanted it. It's not about the bill, the piece of legislation, its about it being forced upon you. My question to all of you who have been so morally offended by this president forcing health care on you, the last time a President unilaterally forced his will upon us we declared war on a country that had not attacked us. Tens of thousands of people died because of that decision. Where was the moral indignation then? A president forces us to war, disguised as a patriotic act, and no one was screaming to the heavens then. Is war patriotic and health care immoral?
We need to get our priorities straight. We are not two groups of people sharing the same space. We are a single country trying to live together in peace and harmony. Talk to each other. Learn the facts. Don't let screaming talk radio hosts tell you your opinion. Formulate it on your own and allow the facts to dictate your opinion to you, not the other way around.
To quote the great Dennis Miller, "This is just my opinion. I could be wrong."

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/12052

Random thoughts

Starting my blog, I can write about anything and I promise that I will not write about nothing. It will contain my thoughts about current events, sports mostly NFL, reviews and other sundry details of an extraordinary life.

So to the point! I am a huge NFL fan. The NFL draft was just competed yesterday. It was a new format, round 1 was held Thursday night, rounds 2 & 3 on Friday and rounds 4 - 7 on Sat. If you were on the west coast however, you got jobbed. Thursday it started at 7pm EST to air in prime time. Well, I guess EST stands for Extra Special Treatment because for those of us in PST, Probably Screwed Tonight, the NFL draft, the high holy days of the NFL began at 4pm on a Thursday. So much for my annual Draft Day Party. So much for the tradition of sitting for hours upon end to delight in all that is NFL. To compound the problem they NFL came back the next day, Friday, with a 3PM start. Just in case we were able to get off work early enough on Thursday to actually watch some of it. The kicker however, came on Saturday with a 7AM start. 7AM! Saturday! This qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment to start the draft at 7am on a Saturday morning. Ridiculous. Letters were written, emails sent. They won't get away with this. There are people who live west of the Mississippi, you know.

I am sure that the commissioner will be on the phone with me shortly.

On the bright side, the San Diego Chargers had a great draft and I am thrilled with our picks.

Inkdyan