I continue in my battle to interest people to buy (or download free) my e-books.
Recently I tried a blatant exercise in marketing psychology, through the employment of compulsive imagery. This was in the form of a snazzy front cover on my very short collection of very short, short pieces: Short And Curlies. Snazzy front covers don’t appear to work (or perhaps it wasn’t snazzy enough?).
I’ve previously explained why I don’t want to go down the path of doing a grand promotional tour of UK bookshops dressed up as a pixie (I hate green tights and those pointy boots hurt my bunions).
I haven’t had much joy trying to get myself heard on any of the local radio stations (they usually call the police before I can reach the studio).
So now I am going to try a totally new wheeze. I am going to publish a fake book (fake is big in the news at the moment, so why not?).
The idea for the story came to me from a newspaper’s letters page. Someone had written in to complain about the current trend for chic-lit books/films being made from classic literature (think modern remakes of Romeo and Juliet). Now this doesn’t bother me (I’m not interested in chic-lit) but it got me thinking about a story based on the classic novel Moby Dick. This is my story:
Sardina Pilchardus
Ishmael, the story’s narrator, has fallen on hard times through the closure of the local, independent book store where he worked, which had failed because of unfair competition and price under-cutting by an international information technology giant. In order to keep his body and soul together, and because he desires to ‘see more of the world’, he takes a job as a shelf-stacker in one of the stores of a national supermarket chain. There he encounters the store’s mercurial manager Ahab, who drives Ishmael and the rest of the supermarket employees on a quest to seek out and inflict revenge upon a great white sardine, which had taken Ahab’s leg in a previous sales quarter.
Ahab and his staff sail up and down the aisles of the supermarket, hunting down the tin which holds the ghostly white sardine (in brine). The story is interspersed with information about fish in general, sardines in particular, canning factories, and the benefits of an omega-3 fatty-acid-rich diet full of vitamins and minerals.
Spoiler Alert! Things don’t turn out well for Ishmael or Ahab and his staff, and a shopping trolley gets broken.
And now I’ve decided to publish this fishy book.
My reasoning for the above is because I noticed a number of (pre-order) e-books up for sale on the website I use, with a publication date of somewhere in the year 2049. I thought: You b@st@rds! You’re only doing that to make your book appear in the newest-oldest list. How fake is that?
It might be that I’ll actually have a story to publish (I’ve been jotting a few things down), but if not, then I guess I shall have to unpublish it (as it wouldn’t be fair on the book-buying public). If, however, it does get published – and by some weird chance manages to sell a few copies, then don’t forget: you read it here first…
Little Dog On A Lead 