Marketing and Other Random Thoughts

My Rotary club's auction is done, thank heavens. It appeared to be a reasonable success. Charity auctions have been down recently (recession? never!) but it looks like we'll be even with last year's haul.

In other news, I received what appeared to be a hand-addressed card inviting me to visit www.milliondollarauthorclub.com/chrisgerrib.htm. Since the URL includes my name, I dropped by, and discovered it's a come-on for Best Seller Mentoring. This outfit promises to give me the tools to convert my novel The Mars Run into a runaway best seller, provided of course I buy all the "training" they will provide me. I Googled all the principals of the site, and they're a bunch of no-name "experts." They provide a list of references, and the science fiction novel listed is languishing at the 2 million mark on Amazon. Not exactly a stellar reference. Methinks all I'd get out of this is lighter in the pocketbook.

Saturday's mail was full of new reading material. First, William W. Lewis sent me his novel The Year of the Monkey for review. Second, Elizabeth Moon's latest epic, Victory Conditions arrived, bundled in with jimhines latest, Goblin Hero.

Lastly, I decided to try out Nancy Fulda's attempt at the "writer's gumball machine" frequently discussed by jeff_duntemann. It's called Anthology Builder, and it's a web site that allows you to create your own short story collection, including picking title and cover art. I created one called Gerrib's Favorite Authors, with stories by Toby Buckell, Jim Hines, kristine_smith, and j_cheney. I noted with interest that printing and fulfillment are being handled by Lulu.

Now, I just need to find some time to write in between reading all these books!