Crosswords and cross words…
While you don’t need a writer to be a fan, crosswords seem a natural pastime for authors. Give me a spare half-hour, and I’ll try to breeze through one. I often get through Monday’s NY Times’s crosswords in less than that, using a pen, and take slightly more time with Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s, using a pencil. If I don’t finish one, I just toss it. There’s always another one.
I often receive books of crosswords as gifts. The intention is good—people who know me know I’m a fan. One of these contained crosswords labeled “easy.” They weren’t so easy, though. I checked the author indicated on the cover. Will Smith? Now, both Will and Smith are common first and last names, respectively, but an unsuspecting buyer probably will think of Will Smith, the actor. He could be a fan and a creator of crosswords, as far as I know. Inside the author was not Will Smith. Maybe the author is some fellow from Hong Kong, who speaks and writes English better than I do and really thinks these crosswords are easy? It was hard to tell.
So here’s the punch line: those “easy” crosswords books were published via Amazon’s Create Space, now part of KDP. Amazon is well known for selling just about anything, and its KDP offerings are no exception. I’m always fighting that stigma because my books are often listed among a lot of trash books that are published. Some of these are undoubtedly pirated. Amazon can’t control that, of course. Anyone can publish anything these days.
This is related to the problems with Amazon affiliates in general. Company X can make a terrible, even dangerous product and sell it on Amazon. In the gig economy, the huge retailer offers a way to reach a national, even international audience, for someone who makes boutique soaps in their garage, for example. I don’t have problems with that per se, especially in these days of COVID, but there’s very little quality control. Just consider all the face mask and hand sanitizer offerings there.
And, like it or not, every self-published author participates in that gig economy. Authors can write, publish, and market their books right from their homes. Many sell directly from their website, or process book orders right at home. Again, nothing wrong with that. The days of book signings and book events are gone, or on their last legs with the pandemic. Amazon and every other internet retailer is the better answer. In fact, one of my internet retailers is Smashwords, and they distribute to many other retailers and lending and library services as well.
You can understand why I sometimes feel like that Will Smith who’s not a Will Smith. In fact, dear readers, I could just be a computer program that writes, publishes, and markets books, all automatically, some sort of AI that’s pretending to be human. Or maybe an ET doing everything from my cloaked spaceship in orbit.
Now those are new versions of “nerdy author,” right?
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Comments are always welcome.
Death on the Danube. Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 agent in East Berlin in the Cold War and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, is on her honeymoon with Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden. Their idyllic cruise down the Danube is interrupted when a reclusive and mysterious passenger is murdered. Why was the victim alone on that riverboat filled with couples, in a stateroom by himself? And who killed him? Esther and Bastiann were often called Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot by wags at the Yard, and this addition to the series might remind readers of Christie’s Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express, but this mystery/thriller is very much a story set in the twenty-first century. So tour the Danube with Esther and Bastiann…and enjoy the ride! Coming soon.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
