Posts Tagged ‘books 4 free’

Only Three Left in Stock – Amazon Says?

Posted: October 20, 2010 in Uncategorized
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What the hell… I seriously thought this was Print on Demand. How strange. Also, how in the hell do you change a subtitle in Amazon to reflect that the book is about Hepatitis C. Grrr… When you search Hepatitis C books, mine is nowhere to be found, because I used an artsy title instead of a factual one…. so I tried to change the subtitle with more than a few keywords, and they freaking rejected it.

So, I, the author, don’t have authority to change my own subtitle. Maddening.

Not that I liked the title, the most unartistic, mangled drivel ever, written soley for the purposes of Amazon’s search engine… still I was proud of the amount of keywords I crammed into 200 characters…alas it was rejected:

“Current value: Hippopotamus Sea
Your suggestion: Hippopotamus Sea: My Viral Sobriety, or How I Beat Hepatitis C, Addiction, Alcoholism, & Interferon by Working the 12 Steps of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, & Recovery Stories of Drinking, LSD, & Cocaine”

* Please do not add descriptions to the title. The title should be as it appears on the book.

Well ya know what Amazon, how about you stop trying to sell Hungry Hungry Hippo to my NOT INTERESTED IN HIPPOPOTAMUS customers, you over digitized, zealous, taking the art out of writing demons!!! But I digress… I shall return in a better mood later.

At least we’re back in top 100 recovery books again… introducing another problem, how do I get classified under Hepatitis C Books?

-Jared Bryan Smith

Books4free.com – Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety by Jared Bryan Smith

Posted: October 11, 2010 in Uncategorized
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Well the book launched yesterday! I was very excited as I didn’t realize it was basically automatic from the acceptance of the proof with Lightning Source. I was putting pressure on my graphics designer/web designer who was basically stalling and putting it right back on me, which drove me a little batty. So I was thinking books4free was going to have to call LSI, which is always a pain in the ass, and find out how to connect LSI and Amazon together. Thankfully it was all done automatically.

Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety, written by me, Jared Bryan Smith, 2.5 years in the making, and it finally launches on 10-10-10, a sheer coincidence. Chronicling a 17 year drug and drinking binge, sobriety,  the 12 Steps of AA in their modern workings, haha, as well as, of course, the contraction of Hepatitis C, the insane costs of the treatment without insurance, the charity given by Roche, and the grueling Interferon treatment itself, it’s certainly a book anyone in recovery would appreciate.

It doesn’t sugar coat much, and cuss words are modern, and used liberally. Anyone who has Hep C, isn’t going to be offended I suspect, but it may not penetrate the staunch religious aspects of AA as some are very averse to cursing. My God doesn’t speak English exclusively so he could care less how many times I drop the F bomb. I didn’t cross the GD line though, haha. It’s a good book, regardless of anyone’s delicate sensitivities. I couldn’t write honestly and not cuss a little.

So as of yesterday my best ranking was in the top 32000 on Amazon, but today, Monday, we’ve drifted back to about 75k, so my brother just bought 3 copies to test this theory, see what happens. Very strange as a publisher books4free can’t just go and look up exactly how many copies they’ve sold, but I guess they probably just haven’t figured that out yet. I suppose books4free should call LSI regardless just to see how to do that.

I’m glad the book is up though. I used a technical editor, and in all honesty it wouldn’t shock me if later on down the road I ended up getting an editor specifically attuned to working on autobiographies, to get rid of some of the name dropping, probably crop some pages, but at this stage, it’s the very best I could do with the tools, resources, and time I had at hand. Especially the money. I would have saved thousands going through Lulu.com or any Vanity Publishing Press out there, but we wanted to use my book to launch books4free.com. We’ll see how that all plays out moving forward  I suppose.

So go take a look please, if you haven’t already!

http://www.books4free.com

-Jared Bryan Smith