My Sci-Fi breakup letter to Amy Zon
The girl who broke my heart (and wallet)
Before we begin, do you like my new email signature photo?
It captures all the things I like. Standup comedy, Science Fiction, Lego, Pink suits, cats, and the destruction of the human species as decreed by the crab gods.
Prologue
You’ve survived the opinion poll. Now you are here, two hundred years before the events of this blog post. Ahead of you there is a clearing, and beyond that clearing there is a big sign. 50% OFF WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TODAY it says. Yes, that’s right, this whole post is about a book sale. But it’s also funny, I wrote a breakup letter to Amazon. I think that’s worth reading. You keep looking, and beyond this sign (how are your eyes this good?) you see some light humour and what’s that? Even further… you can see through time itself… to an upcoming post… a new short story in a few weeks? Wow, your eyesight is brilliant. I didn’t even know there was one of those coming up.
Chapter 1
Her side of the sales graph is cold
A long time ago, in a galaxy adjacent to the one to the left of the one in front of this one, an author marketing guru (who I have since had killed) told me the best thing to do as an author was to make my eBook available exclusively on Amazon, after which I could utilise their free eBook days.
The idea was that I would lazily bask in the searing light of the genius algorithm, as it showed my book to clever people and funny people and convinced them to buy it. I would not need to lift a finger, which was good as my fingers were all sleepy from attacking the multiverse inside my head. I could gel my hair back and take private jet selfies with the Forex traders and Crypto bros who, despite earning £30,000 a month, can’t afford a decent size shirt to wear on their instagram videos. Like, I understand being proud of your razor-sharp man nipples, but I don’t need them in my face in the morning. I’m trying to go to the toilet. Why are you posing beside an expensive car? This teaches me nothing about trading.
Anyway, as you may have gathered from my tone, this genius book marketing plan did not work. Turns out, if you want people to buy a book, it’s usually a good idea to show them what the book is about.
It’s almost as if readers are smart people who make informed decisions, decisions which cannot be predicted by ‘cheat sheets’ and algorithms.
(Don’t tell the ‘authorpreneurs’, they suffer enough)
So, like the neolithic storyteller in her cave, or the modern drug dealer at a house party, I began offering a small sample of my wares for free to anyone who had a spare email address to trade. That’s why most of you are here.
And you will continue to get free stories monthly, don’t you worry!
Our symbiosis began there, dear reader.
I give you stories, you comment on the stories or ‘like’ a post. I feel motivated, I write more stories. When you comment or email me to tell me how much a story changed your day, I am reminded of my reason to exist. Sometimes I print the best comments and keep them in my desk. I look at my fan art every day, and I plan on framing my favourite book reviews when I find a nice enough frame.
To put into perspective how much the reviews and comments mean to me, I have a Masters Degree in Writing which I put to good use in my writing coaching, but I have not often felt like framing it. I’m proud of it, but it felt like an inevitable step in my journey, whereas the positive reviews still feel like a surprise. I knew I was getting the MA, what I didn’t know is that people would love WBTH and my other stories as much as I loved writing them.
This symbiosis works. You invest time and thought and money into my imagination, and I give you something back. We briefly share a conceptual universe. Sometimes you buy a book from me, and I use the money to print more books and get train tickets to radio interviews, where I talk about new books that then become easier to make. A modest investment today grows into something bigger tomorrow.
Or, in the case of WBTH, the thing is big to begin with and only gets bigger.
On several occassions, a good review or comment has dragged me out of a writerly funk, the funks usually brought about by doom and gloom writing community news or dry spells on my sales dashboard, or those really annoying memes writers post about how fashionable it is to secretly hate being a writer.
I love being a writer.
I’m writing to entertain you, so if you tell me you’ve been entertained, I know I’m doing my job properly.
So, if the book is so good, why haven’t more people got it?
The answer is simple: Early on in my publishing journey, I had no idea there were so many platforms you can put books on. I only read paperbacks, so I had no prior knowledge of the eBook scene.
So, for a long while, my book was only available on Amazon.
And not everyone likes Amazon. Indeed, over 90% of indie bookstores I’ve spoken to have said they won’t stock Amazon-published books (yes, I’ve run the numbers). I had one bookstore interested in WBTH last month, who had to say no to me because they don’t touch Amazon.
Well… seems we have an issue.
So I wrote an email.
Chapter 2
The breakupening
I blasted a lot of money on advertising WBTH on Amazon, most of which I didn’t get back. Despite having readers of Sci-Fi giants like Neal Asher and Adrian Tchaikovsky buy my books, thus putting me on the ‘also read’ tab on their pages - where I still reside - I wasn’t seeing many clicks.
Perhaps my marketing manager pal was right. Who Built The Humans?, being comprised of 11 universes, some of which could and probably will be released as their own novellas, could have done with being more than one book.
But I wanted it to be valuable.
I wanted it to feel like a ‘best of’ collection for a dead writer who wasn’t dead yet.
Nonetheless, I decided to find value in myself, so, I broke up with Amy Zon. We needed some time apart. It wasn’t her. It was me. No wait, it was her.
Dear Amy Zon.
I want you to know that I have enjoyed our time together thoroughly. Though I wasted a grand total of £421.07 on your adverts, I feel I have helped you buy nice trinkets and that has made you a happy personified megacorporation, if not slightly reduced your character to a caricature weighed down by expensive bracelets and jangly, shiny things.
I have enjoyed your customer service and the ease with which I have been able to find appropriate, strange tags for my Sci-Fi Comedy book WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? And I have enjoyed the accessibility to readers and firm emphasis on allowing only reviews from verified purchases, too.
That said, I believe we are reaching a point of diminishing returns in our relationship. The atmosphere in our home is cold and distant, and your faceless glowing body freaks out the cat. I understand why you wanted me to get an AMY ZON 4 EVA AND EVA tattoo on my rightmost testicle, but I am not a fan of the whining noise it emits whenever a delivery is imminent. It unsettles me.
In addition to these points, I am also becoming acutely aware that I have developed a parasocial relationship with a shopping company that, if unregulated, would likely fire workers out of cannons to move them faster around the warehouse, and would no doubt blame the workers for the strange new stains on the walls.
You’re brilliant, useful, but ultimately quite cold and ruthless.
I love you Amy Zon… but, I think we should see other people.
- Your darling imaginary husband, Phillip
Luckily I never needed to send that email, because Amazon are actually pretty good at sorting out publishing stuff for you. Convenience is their main selling point, and it was quite easy to slip away into another relationship, or twelve.
I felt so naughty.
But it’s the modern world, and I’m catapulting myself into it.
I am now in a perfunctory polycule of publishing, a polyauthorous poetical relationship with many bookstores, all of whom love me very much (apart from that one who is new to the group and isn’t very cool with the sleeping rota and who would probably be happier in a monogamous thing but doesn’t have the self-confidence to bring this up during our weekly interventions).
So, to reiterate, WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? is now half price on the Smashwords store. That’s what this post was meandering towards.
I enjoy writing the funny posts a lot. Can you tell?
Chapter 3
The return of the mysterious number
Something is happening on that date. Be here.
Artists are weird things. We are stubborn, driven, and sometimes deranged. I spent four months meticulously arranging the completed stories of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? so that some future reader might read it thrice over.
Once left-to-right, because it suited her to do things that way.
Once universe-by-universe, to get a deeper look into each.
And once in a random order, determined by flicking through the pages and seeing what caught her eye.
Only after reading the book these three ways would she see the secret architecture I had secreted under its skin. For this is not a book of lifeless, formless comedic and science fictional meat. It has a skeleton. It muscle. It has motion.
It’s more than one book.
But it looks like one book.
It’s a living multiverse.
Chapter 4
Who trusts authors anyway?
But who would trust the author to review their own book? I wouldn’t, so I’ve also included my favourite review.
★★★★★ "An astonishing creation, filled with conjecture and supposition. I can honestly say that I have never read anything like this before. The scope is Universe wide and simultaneously microscopically small and incredibly intense.
Phillip Carter has taken the philosophical idea that all of reality is but the dream of some immense cosmic being and dragged it kicking and screaming into a new existence.
The language is poetic and the ideas challenging both in their execution and in the way consciousness is perceived.
Many strands are interwoven and ultimately connected into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
Phillip also infuses the book with an acerbic devastatingly acidic wit compounded with a bone dry sense of humour. The author’s obvious intelligence shines through in both the creative imagination and the beauty of the language, never pandering to any temptation to “dumb down” instead urging the reader to expand their own knowledge and awareness.
This is not a by-the-numbers or trope-driven book following some predetermined and predictable formula but rather an exercise in intellectual science-fiction. It is not the easiest of books to read and understand making all the more worthwhile for it but neither is it so convoluted as to be incomprehensible.
I definitely look forward to reading more by Phillip and highly recommend this to any reader wanting more than genre written pulp."
I love that review.