Three In One Week

Reviews of Dissolute Kinship, that is. Varying from the indepth to the brief, all three of them kind and thoughtful and fair. Honestly, I wish I could express the right degree of gratitude toward people who not only bother to read my work, but who then go the extra mile and review it. I hear too many authors complaining about how too few readers review after reading. Well, how often does any one of us take that extra step? I do on occasion, but certainly not for every book. Reviews are gold, but they're not an automatic right.

Anyway to the first: Jim Devitt succinctly delivers the following, in a generous 5-Star review entitled A Grand Perspective:

David Antrobus captures the essence of community and perspective in this vivid account of 9-11. The pages come alive, not with destruction and tragedy, but with hope and meaning. The author opens his mind and feelings, leading us through the process from an outsider's point of view. In the end, he helps us understand by painting a masterpiece with words. He shares with us everything, from the guilt felt while viewing ground zero to the greater understanding how human lives are interconnected. Great job, Antrobus.

I have to say I'm extremely gratified how many readers of this little book get what I was attempting to do, that it was never solely about the actual attacks, but about how we moved on and how we created new connections after being brought together in such initially appalling circumstances.

Okay, on to the next. A.B. Shepherd, in a similarly brief but insightful assessment, has this to say:

This book focuses on the devastation he finds when he gets to New York City following the events of September 11, 2001 and the affecting and poignant way he has of describing what he sees. For some people, like me, who still find the devastation of that day very difficult to deal with, this sometimes evoked more emotion than I expected.

If you want to read a well written first-hand perspective of the visual aftermath of 9/11 this is an excellent book. A literary triumph. It's short length is not a detriment. My only criticism is the off-hand introduction of some very relevant emails that David sent to friends at the time. I feel they could have been incorporated a little more seamlessly.

Fair point about the emails, by the way. As much as they illustrate the more raw, unedited version of my reactions to events and scenes, I never did manage to blend them in a wholly satisfying way.

And finally, Carolyn Steele brings all her experience with trauma to bear in a very attentive and lengthy analysis of my book. I won't reproduce the entire thing here, but if you're interested, check out the link to Carolyn's blog. I will, however, quote some of my favourite parts of her astonishingly empathic response, many of which choked me up, quite frankly:

[T]he traveller in question is a poet, a philosopher and somewhat acquainted with trauma and you have a book that transcends genres such as ‘memoir’ or ‘travelogue’ and even ‘poetry’. It is simply unique.

As the narrative takes us deep into Manhattan, the city of New York becomes a character in its own right. Someone you become part of, convulsed with unfathomable grief.

One damaged soul who comprehends the need for repetition, the importance  of outing the trauma, more than most of us…gave the city the only gift he had. When he mentions a sense of shame for having been a tourist in those terrible days, we realise that his processing is not yet done. One day the author will understand that he was the right person in the right place, giving of himself for people who had no more idea than he did why he was there.

I cannot tell you that you will enjoy this book, but I can tell you that you won’t regret reading it. And that you will reread it more than once.

This book is a piece of poetry and a testament to what it means to be human.

See? I defy anyone to not be moved by her words. The bonus is that Carolyn also interviewed me for a podcast to be broadcast soon (watch this space for developments) and if you can get past my annoying Anglo-Canuck accent, you will almost certainly be afforded more insight into the experiences surrounding that maddening little book (and its upcoming sequel).

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

The Power at Our Fingertips

In this week’s post, I want to demonstrate the power of what Mark Coker calls the “rise of the indie author collective” (The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success). Indies Unlimited is every bit a part of that rise, that revolution really, one that has eroded the power of traditional publishing and significantly democratized the entire process.

Now, there are as many tips and tricks out there for helping independent authors “maximize their brand” or “utilize the tools of the internet” as there are slightly dodgy-looking punters at a female mud wrestling contest, and the debate continues to rage over the effectiveness of reciprocal Facebook “liking” or Amazon “tagging” every bit as fiercely as it does over that of Mona’s standing moonsault and tilt-a-whirl crossbody press on Dolores back in the Fifth Round.

And I have no more answers to those questions than your average… well, dodgy-looking punter at a female mud… But enough of that; in the tradition of great pitchmen everywhere… I wanna tell ya about what works, folks!

On March 17, our colleague here at Indies Unlimited, the redoubtable Jim Devitt, showed us a neat if at-first-glance confusing trick. Well, confusing if, like me, you’re more than a little dense when it comes to the arcane ways of the mighty Amazon dot com. In his post, Jim explained a method by which you change what is known as the “category path” of your book on its Amazon page and effectively reduce its number of competitors by fine-tuning that path, or string. Now, I’m not going to completely humiliate myself by outlining each and every wrong turn I took after my initial wild misinterpretations of Jim’s instructions. Suffice it to say that, after a number of emails between Amazon and my heartbreakingly clueless self, I did manage to end up with two slightly more customized category paths. Read Jim’s post—including the comments section in which I also humiliate myself publicly (okay, sensing a theme here)—for a much better nuts-and-bolts explanation than I could honestly provide (I can do nuts, no problem, just not bolts).

But the point is that I did finally arrive at these two new paths, and noticed that in one of them in particular (Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > United States > States > New York > New York City), I was already ranked at #4. It so happened that someone bought my book that day and I noticed it move up to #2. Which is when it dawned on me that if I asked enough people to buy it over one short, frenzied period of time, there was a chance it could make the #1 slot, however temporarily, thus giving me a bone fide Amazon #1 Bestseller! The only question: how far ahead in Amazon’s mysterious ranking algorithms was the current #1 seller in that particular category path, and was it catchable? I didn’t know. But I wanted to find out.

So I called in all my favours from the boys downtown… well okay, from my slightly bemused and mainly bespectacled writing cohorts and colleagues from within various Facebook groups. Essentially begging them to buy my book, I even lowered the price, which is the equivalent of leaning into the passenger side window and flashing acres of cleavage while making kissy faces. Not a good look, in other words. And perhaps my lowest point to date as an independent writer was when I found myself with my finger poised over the Buy Now With 1-Click button… and clicked. Yes, I admit it here for the world to mock me with: I bought my own book. For which I later did penance by dragging razor wire through my spleen and driving carpet nails into my perineum.

But also, some very kind people, most of them my colleagues right here at Indies Unlimited, felt sufficient excruciating embarrassment sympathy for my plight that they dug deep and shelled out for my lonely little book. Cue a couple of tense hours refreshing the Amazon page and watching the ranking (what on earth did we do for fun before the internet? Torture the kids with crocodile clips and car batteries? Prank the neighbours with elaborate setups involving loud hailers, flamethrowers and wolverine feces? Oh wait, yeah, we read books), until… well, it worked. Just like that (if you doubt me, click on the embedded photo above).

I was gobsmacked. #1 in an admittedly gerrymandered category, but no matter. It was a real bestseller. Which is especially ironic, since it has never sold well, being both short and nonfiction; pretty much guaranteed niche market material. In fact, I don’t mind admitting that its usual overall ranking fluctuates somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000. And that brings me to another point: the book’s overall Amazon Kindle Store ranking peaked at around 22,000, which prompts me to ask: if a small number of near-simultaneous purchases is enough to lift one eBook hundreds of thousands of places in the Amazon lists, are the vast majority of eBooks really selling as well as we’ve been led to believe? Is this an example of the so-called long tail, and did I just witness my own book advance from its usual place partway down the tail to somewhere nearer the front… yet still essentially a part of the tail? Okay, we’re getting into areas outside my expertise, which is admittedly not difficult, but it’s nutrition for cogitation, don’t you think?

What I take from this, however, is that the power of social media and our potential for collective action gave me a bestseller, as it could give you a bestseller, and as much as an observer might accuse us of gaming the system, we still put in the effort and discovered it was possible. And that surely stands for something in a world in which the little guy often feels excluded by the arcane rules of gargantuan corporations; rules that appear only to benefit those already at the top. Hey, Coker’s right. We’re not so little after all, not when we’re many.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on March 30, 2010. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.