The Time Bubble

 On Monday evening I noticed something odd happening with the rating count of my Time Bubble book on Amazon. This book has been out for nine years, selling steadily, and accruing reviews along the way. Up until about two or three years ago, people had to leave a written review in order for their ratings to be included in the total, but that has now changed. Now, if someone rates a book they have bought without leaving a review, that's included too. They could leave a rating formerly, but the only place it showed up was on Goodreads, a sister site. So accumulating reviews was a long and slow process. It is estimated that only about 1% of people who purchase leave a review, so it took a long old time for The Time Bubble to reach the milestone of 100 reviews. In recent years, since they started including the ratings, it climbed more quickly but it was only new ratings. The historical ratings seemed lost forever in the mists of time, like those long sought-after missing black-and-white...

I can't believe it's barely 18 months since I published my first book on Amazon. I also can't believe how naive I was back then. In fact I almost cringe at the mistakes I made at rushing out that initial draft. I thought at the time that it was OK to paste together a set of blog entries and various other bits and pieces of writing I had knocking about, shove any old cover on it, don't bother proof-reading it and call it a book. Then try and market and sell it to family and friends without even thinking about the bigger picture. That the book sold at all was a minor miracle, but in fact it was relatively successful. However, the book's shortcomings were soon picked up on. I went back, cleaned it up, put a new cover on it, edited it into some sort of sensible format and put it back out there. That first book, Fortysomething Father has attracted more reviews than any other (well it has been out the longest), and is also the only one that has 1* and 2* reviews. ...

I've been spending a fair bit of time over at Goodreads recently. If you aren't aware of what Goodreads is, the easiest way to describe it is as a kind of "Facebook for readers and authors" site. When I joined I found that quite a few of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers were already there. I also found it was a great place to meet and share experiences with other authors. I have found this invaluable as I still see myself as very much in the fledgling stage of my writing career. Making contact with other authors has led to a first for this blog today. After three years and several hundred posts, I am delighted to welcome today my first guest blogger: Qatar based writer Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar who has some valuable insights to share on the writing process: =============================================================== First You Write it, Then You Raise it By Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar Writing is a solitary activity: I’ve already been at this des...