Here's an interesting statistic (can I call it a statistic? Maybe not. I might have to come back to that word later). I published both The Monster Magnet (Book 1) and Shouting and Pointing (1) over the last weekend. So far, the downloads on it are pretty healthy - and the feedback is good. I was faced with a multitude of choices before doing this - as everybody is aware these days, there are so many venues to place things like this, where do you start? Well, the smart money is on market saturation. Get your product into as many 'bookstores' as possible. I was originally going to publish them only here so that readers would have to download them from my own 'store' (making the entire exercise truly independent), but after looking over smashwords, I decided to drop it there to see what would happen.

Truth be told, the front end of smashwords is disgusting and looks amateur at best - and I wrote and told them so - I don't really like being associated with a store that looks so damn cheap. One of these days somebody will come along and show them how it's done properly and all that good work will be for nothing. But that's their problem not mine. I was mostly curious as to how they would make the transition easier for me with regards to hitting the kindle store, kobo... etc, hard and fast.

And the answer is, I still don't know because nothing has happened. For a fledgling industry that bases one of its selling points on how instant everything is, that's no good to me. Actually, that's not true, I am more than prepared to wait and filter everything out slowly. Besides, it gives me time to figure out the practicalities of exactly how to do it all myself. I mean, I know most of it in theory but there's no substitute for seeing exactly how these things work in the real world.

I think the sacrifice of having somebody else do this for me now, while I'm busy writing more, is priceless. I liken it to a radio station occasionally playing your song while you're still busy working on your album - and I think that's healthy and a healthy attitude. I have no desire to join the dirty street-fight that seems to be taking place everywhere else.

So - why the John Carter movie poster? 1. I needed something that looked nice on the front page 2. It looks great and 3. I have never seen two trailers for the same film that make it look as though one of them has nothing to do with the other. Check it yourself here. I still think it looks great though.