In fairness I have to update my rant at Amazon yesterday.
It was the fourth of July so I could not reasonably have expected them to do a great deal what with the entire country off by the barbie and drinking bear. They, like the rest of us, need to have lives even if some of us don't.
But, they were, in fact, working and first thing this morning I had a response. They did not refer me to a useless page but fixed the problem. They transferred all the requested information and updated my account themselves. They changed my password for the new account and gave me a password which could actually be remembered rather than looking like some kind of code leading to a Martian invasion. I thought about changing the password but I rather like it so I think I will keep it just for Amazon.
So, thanks, Folks. Good job.

In fairness I have to update my rant at Amazon yesterday.
It was the fourth of July so I could not reasonably have expected them to do a great deal what with the entire country off by the barbie and drinking bear. They, like the rest of us, need to have lives even if some of us don't.
But, they were, in fact, working and first thing this morning I had a response. They did not refer me to a useless page but fixed the problem. They transferred all the requested information and updated my account themselves. They changed my password for the new account and gave me a password which could actually be remembered rather than looking like some kind of code leading to a Martian invasion. I thought about changing the password but I rather like it so I think I will keep it just for Amazon.
So, thanks, Folks. Good job.

In fairness I have to update my rant at Amazon yesterday.
It was the fourth of July so I could not reasonably have expected them to do a great deal what with the entire country off by the barbie and drinking bear. They, like the rest of us, need to have lives even if some of us don't.
But, they were, in fact, working and first thing this morning I had a response. They did not refer me to a useless page but fixed the problem. They transferred all the requested information and updated my account themselves. They changed my password for the new account and gave me a password which could actually be remembered rather than looking like some kind of code leading to a Martian invasion. I thought about changing the password but I rather like it so I think I will keep it just for Amazon.
So, thanks, Folks. Good job.

In fairness I have to update my rant at Amazon yesterday.
It was the fourth of July so I could not reasonably have expected them to do a great deal what with the entire country off by the barbie and drinking bear. They, like the rest of us, need to have lives even if some of us don't.
But, they were, in fact, working and first thing this morning I had a response. They did not refer me to a useless page but fixed the problem. They transferred all the requested information and updated my account themselves. They changed my password for the new account and gave me a password which could actually be remembered rather than looking like some kind of code leading to a Martian invasion. I thought about changing the password but I rather like it so I think I will keep it just for Amazon.
So, thanks, Folks. Good job.

Don't it just make you smile.

I got an email from Amazon this morning telling me I had an order. They do that frequently for one or two books but I clicked on it to find out what smashingly large order we had this time.

But what I got was a long agreement I had to agree to so they could "upgrade" our account. By now I was wondering if it really was from Amazon because it was all so bananas. But then Amazon is often bizarre. If I have a problem and contact them I may get back something which says I should go to FAQs for the answer. We all know how useful FAQs and Help are!

By now I am wondering if what this is is a pfish. So I go back and take my usual route to our Advantage account. Same problems. So I slogged on through what looked very much like a form for people setting up a first time account. But I went on and entered all the information they already had. I was wondering if they needed some additional specific information why they didn't just ask for it with a form which was labeled in an appropriate fashion.

Anyway, on I went until I get to the account number for the bank account for the electronic transfer. The box will accept no numbers no matter what I try. I'm completely blocked. But I also notice that the next box asks for the 9 digit routing number for my bank. My bank now uses a 10 digit routing number for incoming transfers so 9 digits is useless.

"Technical problem?" they ask at the bottom of this useless form I have now wasted time on. So I click on contact us and decline to go to FAQs. I went back to my address book and sent my email to them from there. I can't wait to see how long it takes to get a response and whether it is of any use. I'm glad I'm not paying someone else to deal with them or I wouldn't bother. But then I wonder why I bother period.

Isn't it amazing how long it takes us to catch up with what is actually going on. It wasn't that long ago that men retired at age 65 and were, on average, dead at age 67. So, you retired and then died. Neat. Simple. But it is not like that anymore and we are struggling with terminology.

Yesterday CNN ran a feature about "Life After Work". Interesting because we do seem to have life after work although the terminology is terminally confusing. The person featured was a "retired" woman who was running a full time cookie making business complete with her own van. I don't get it. Isn't she working?

I can't come up with a useful definition for retirement. Does it mean when someone stops delivering a paycheck to you? In that case I retired over 30 years ago which was the last time I got a paycheck from anyone except myself. In all that time no one made a job for me, no one gave me health insurance. I did it all for myself. It is frequently annoying that when you are self employed, the "employed" deem you to be unemployed and therefore available to do anything they want at any time which they can't do because they are "employed".

So, when exactly did I get to be retired. Or do I get that in the future. And what will happen then. Will the paycheck I never got stop coming.

Of course, you can talk to the nice folks at Social Security and become completely confused. They understand employed, unemployed and retirement and nothing else. Self employed is a major problem. The rest of us seem to be a problem.

I hope someone will shortly let me know what I am so I can respond with something other than confusion. This does not feel like what I thought retirement was and I do not feel on death's door. Maybe for me the problem is self publishing. It seems as a self publisher that I must be unemployed more than retired. Actually, I guess what is happening is that I am having an identity crisis which has been going on for over thirty years. That's it! I'm a self publishing, retired, unemployed person who is having an identity crisis. Now maybe I can create a crisis for someone else as they try to fit that on their check sheet.

At BEA it was recommended that those of us who blog should do so daily. I assume that they meant it should be done daily if you had some purpose in doing it such as publicizing your publishing endeavors and specifically your books.
But as I am doing this I am wondering about the impact of all this blogging. When asked for a show of hands most people in the room at one of the presentations indicated that they had read someone else's blog just that morning. As more and more of us blog there is more and more to be read and more and more to write. Do we, in the end, have time for anything else?
This situation is an extension of a broader phenomenon. The ipod is everywhere and it holds up to 3000 songs. I am assuming that most ipod owners select the songs they put on their instruments. It is always possible that someone is selling preloaded ipods. Let's see that is an ipod for $300 and 3000 songs at 99 cents. So, the cost comes in at just under $3300. I doubt there is a market like that out there. But who knows.
Anyway, you have to select your songs which takes time. For my part I have not purchased an ipod as much as I like to have music going. Where on earth am I to find the time to program that toy? I have no plans to invest my time in that fashion.
Back to blogging. Isn't this getting to be a rather compulsive process. We publish our thoughts and ramblings and read those of other people. We could spend all of our time engaged in the blog. Whether it is ministering to your ipod or massaging your blogging life it appears we have entered a virtual world where we have virtual lives made possible by our technology. Maybe this is the answer to war and will bring peace in our time. If we are compulsively engaged in our virtual relationship with the content of our technological wonders then we will not have time to do damage to each other. Except in the form of our virtual compulsivity.

I do wonder how marketing people keep their sanity. Or is it that sane people don't go into marketing? Now that authors have to do their own marketing whether they have a big time publisher or are doing it themselves, we all have to be marketing people.

But, I find it very frustrating. I admit I have a high tolerance for ambiguity but I'm not so sure I want to live in a completely ambiguous world. Trying to sell books is nothing but ambiguous. I suppose I should be satisfied if they are selling but it would be nice to know what we are doing right.

We are busily promoting and are watching Amazon put in pitiful orders which are expensive to ship and at the same time the orders roll in from Baker & Taylor. Not that I am uphappy about that but I would like to know what it means and why. Does that mean we are somehow tapping into the library market which is supposedly a large part of their business? If that is true, how did we do that? It beats me.

I'd really rather put away my shotgun and get out my daisy air rifle to hit our sales target.

Speaking of sales, the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, is out. Our reviews are really good and it is viewed as a stand alone book which is important. Come visit our website at www.annierogers.com and read the reviews and see our latest articles. See you there.

Recently our webmistress pointed out that there were a few dozen things which needed to be updated at www.annierogers.com. ( Why does that sound so kinky? We have webmasters but that means a man. And she is a she. So it must be webmistress. Right?) Anyway, she was validly pointing out the fact that some things had changed and we really needed to update.

So, I went and took a look. That was pretty awful. Now I believe most of life is self inflicted and that is true for our website as well. It is not just your pretty picture with the cover image of the latest book up front. We have lots of stuff including our articles in the Author to Author section and out press kit. And so on. So, there was lots to do and I spent two days combing it and revising. If we had kept it simple then it wouldn't be that amount of work. But I have to face the fact that we decided not to keep it simple. We wanted to to be interesting. Which it is.

So, give Donna (our Webmistress) a few days and then run over to www.annierogers.com and roam around. Ciao y'all.

They are throwing a party and we are not invited.
Early in June there was an ad in Publisher Weekly for nominations for the debut author award given at the Quill Awards. My wife passed it on to me to look at and she asked what the Quill Awards were. I had run across them but couldn't remember so I googled them.
The ad gave the basic information needed for nomination which was to be done by email but failed to note a few things which I found on the Quill website.
You only need apply for an award if you have a starred review in Publishers Weekly and are at the top of the bestseller list from PW and national booksellers. The top award went to someone by the name of Rowling. Humm. Let's see. That means you really need not apply unless the debut author is one of those published by the big six. Most of us peons will not get into PW to begin with no matter what we produce.
So, it boils down to the big six and big media throwing themselves a party and we are not invited.
I thought about nominating anyway since the ad in PW did not specify the details I uncovered but gave it a low priority and by the time I got back to it the deadline had passed.
Maybe you are thinking it was just as well that I didn't tug on superman's cape. I don't subscribe to that philosphy. What are they going to do? Ignore us? Reject our nomination? Not give us a review? They already do THAT!