Someone in Japan Bought A Book

Ok, that's not a catchy title, but it has the virtue of being a provable fact. Someone in Japan went on Amazon and bought one of my books.

That's a terrifying thought. A person well outside of my personal circle is going to bring unprejudiced eyes to something I wrote that has my name on it. That person is right now forming an opinion on my work, and it could be harsh. There will be no explanations by text for missing ideas, no personal connection to buffer the judgement, no prior experience to soften that person's view. Whatever typos I missed are exposed to their view. The ideas are held up like slides before someone and I have no control over how that person receives them.

Of course, that is true of all works. That is the big goal. Come and see what I created, behold and judge it on its own merits. I hope it is holding up.

I know that someone in Japan has bought a book of mine because Kindle sent me a notice about a payment in yen. It doesn't say what the payment is for, so it could be my cookbook, or it could be one of my adventures. I published a mystery just the other day, so that one might be it. That book I can say has most of its typos caught and the formatting has been polished somewhat. There is one side-questy scene that's a bit pointless, but I stand by it for the moment. Well, perhaps I should have cut it and spent more time on the church instead. Or perhaps not. It feels ok, and I don't know what I would have done with the church scene. I think of the scene- it's the one where Karl help a guildmember fix their big pottery wheel so he'll tell him and Brynhild where to find the guildmaster- as a little loose thread end in a tightly woven plot. A little extra tension, maybe, and a chance for Karl to play to his strength- kicking things.

The other books could probably stand a little better formatting. The final chapter heading in Seed of A Lord doesn't have a number, none of them have a table of contents, and their covers are all generic. One of these days I'll have to invest in proper covers and give interesting descriptions instead of breezy overviews. Copywriting is something I can do for others but really struggle with when it is my own work. What do you say? "My YA-ish adventure story in faux Middle Ages is actually really interesting you guys, really. Please believe me."

I'll bet it was the cookbook. That's actually useful, and covers are less of a deterrent.

That one is pretty basic though.