Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

I'm running a free sale on the first book in my trilogy today (and tomorrow for anyone that's interested) and it got me thinking, what is a book worth? I was looking at the latest Black Crouch novel, Dark Matter , which is priced at $12.49 and noticed that his Wayward Pines novels were priced at $5.99. Crouch's Dark Matter is higher in the Amazon charts than Stephen King's, End of Watch (which I'm reading right now and so far not overly impressed - but I'm not a Stephen King junky so my views don't mean much). Watch sells for $14.99.  It's also worth nothing that King's past works sell for $9.99 on average. Now, I'm new on the scene so I'm happy just to get my work into people's hands any which way. My free sale was great today with over 300 people downloading the book at the time of writing this. It's normally $3.99 and the other two in the trilogy are $5.99 (lucky for me readers seem okay with that, as sales are starting to ...

Just a heads up to folks... The Fall of Man: Days of Judgment will be free on Amazon on August 25th (Thursday) and 26th (Friday). Two days only!  It's the first book in the three-book The Fall of Man trilogy.  So for sci-fi / mystery lovers, here's a chance to discover the series at no cost. Grab it now, I likely won't be running another sale on it for the next 45 days. Also, for those who got it last time and subsequently left reviews and bought the sequels... you're the best! I've really been encouraged by reader reception... fingers crossed the positive feedback continues.

So there are lots of positives about self-publishing and I'll do a post on them in the future, but I thought I'd share some of the less-than-positive things about it. Partly to share with readers what authors go through to bring you a work and partly to acknowledge what seems so rarely to be acknowledged within the industry. Are these negatives absolute and all-consuming? No. Do they make self-publishing not worth it? No. There are just as many (albeit different) negatives with traditional publishing. Will everyone agree with these? Probably not (but let's not let that stop us). Let's call this list Dark Realities of Self-Publishing : Dark Reality One - No One Cares As a general principle, no one really cares that you are self-publishing. Until you develop a reader base who show they care by buying your works, it's a desolate path for the self-publisher. There's no agent or publisher cheering you on. There's no one ponying up advances. There...

... this is not what you see in a sane world / society. This has turned into WWE, where each day brings an onslaught of barbs and metaphorical chair throwing. Trump is working for Putin Trump is the next Hitler Hillary lies about emails Republicans endorsing Clinton Sanders bashes Hillary then turns around and endorses her Both candidates have negative favorable ratings  (C: 52% T: 59%) And while I hadn't seen it before, stumbling on this video of what looks like Clinton having a mild seizure while being questioned by reporters only makes this two horse race even odder.  While I still think Trump will ultimately win purely as a "revolt against the system" vote, one has to wonder regardless of who wins, will the country / world be able to move forward?  I suspect the answer is... not really. Whoever wins will likely only usher in the next phase in the collapse of society as we've known it. It seems as though no one is overly concerned tha...