Inside Baseball
This post is not about baseball --but the inner workings of book publishing. The paperback edition of Sky High Stakes is just now available on Amazon. It has taken over a month since the book was published for it to show up on Amazon. Why? Well no one knows, or at least I have not been able to find the someone who does.
I do not sell a lot of paperbacks on-line, mostly e-books, so it was not that big a deal--mostly it just seemed strange. This process is driven by the database of a major book distributor which Amazon accesses to build their database (I think). This is electronic stuff so it happens basically instantly--except when it doesn't.
We more or less take the invisible inter-workings of the world for granted--which is the way it should be; but when they do not work it makes you feel helpless.
Just in case you were wondering, I am a baseball fan. I follow the Colorado Rockies. Even though they will lose more than they win, I always have hope it will turn-around very soon. That is a true fan.
I do not sell a lot of paperbacks on-line, mostly e-books, so it was not that big a deal--mostly it just seemed strange. This process is driven by the database of a major book distributor which Amazon accesses to build their database (I think). This is electronic stuff so it happens basically instantly--except when it doesn't.
We more or less take the invisible inter-workings of the world for granted--which is the way it should be; but when they do not work it makes you feel helpless.
Just in case you were wondering, I am a baseball fan. I follow the Colorado Rockies. Even though they will lose more than they win, I always have hope it will turn-around very soon. That is a true fan.
Baseball! Now you're talking my language.
ReplyDeleteI am a Detroit Tigers fan of long suffering.
However, to the point, particularly to do with The Great Book- And Everything Else-Selling Site Which Must Not Be Named:
I once put together a book about management for a friend, got it submitted to that site's handy little subdomain, put in for most of its bells & whistles on my friend's behalf, and sent it on its merry way.
In the time since, I can say without fear of contradiction that its greatest marketing and promotion successes are owed to: my friend. By himself. Alone. No thanks to You Know Who. In fact, after weeks of watching that site promote other deservedly unknown writers, I at last asked what could be done to get a little love - for any book; heck, I didn't mind working for it.
Somebody got back to me and said something about an algorithm.
In my background are many years of working with techies who barely know what they're doing, so they throw B.S. at most such questions. And when I read "algorithm" in that reply, I knew who I was dealing with.