Authors Electric

Boy meets girl. They’re made for each other. They laugh at the same things, love the same bars and restaurants and clubs, share a passion for films and concerts and going to the theatre and roaming for hours through fascinating little shops in far-flung corners of the globe, and they read the same books and discuss them at length, and if their opinions ever differ that’s great, they can talk about it over red wine long into the night. Everything, in fact, is as good as it can be – because not only do they both love doing all that stuff, they love it even more when they can enjoy those things together. They are in love. So, naturally, they get married, and they have children, thereby ensuring that they can never do any of those things together ever again. Is that a fundamental flaw in human relationships? I’m just throwing it out there. Imagine if it were a job application. 'We need you to have a degree in physics and astrochemistry, and your daily duties will involve chick...

One of the excitements of ebooks is that rather than having to fathom Amazon's sometimes bizarre rankings system, or trying to get figures out of your publisher (!), you know exactly how many books you sell, every day, every hour, every minute. You can go to your dashboard on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, wherever and see how it's all coming along. Or not. As I am responsible for publishing other authors as well, I have to keep a tight rein on records of sale for the monthly royalty payouts. This has always been an enjoyable exercise because month after month sales figures have been on the rise. Of course this had to fluctuate sooner or later, and in the past couple of months I have seen the first of the 'dips' across the board, especially with US sales. Thankfully there were reasons. On a couple of days with no US Amazon sales at all (major panic) it turned out there had been a technical glitch at Amazon HQ. General elections and natural disasters also took their t...