Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

Hey Folks, Good news, I'll have a new book out soon. Just finished the first draft. I'll keep the title a mystery (in part because I haven't locked it in 100 percent yet). If all goes well we're looking at late October or very early November. While The Fall of Man trilogy dealt with human nature, our current social and economic woes, and the ontology of existence, this new work delves more into the human response to living within a totalitarian society. Anyway, the first draft is complete and I have to say, I'm quite proud of the final product. I think folks are going to enjoy it. More news coming in the near future, Stay Tuned, Rob

So it looks like Amazon implemented a new policy with regards to product reviews. In order for someone to leave a review they must have spent $50 on Amazon since the creation of their Amazon account. All I can say is Hallelujah ! This move, assuming Amazon actually enforces it and it's not merely a toothless tiger, will go a long way to shutting down the fake review business. Obviously, it has drawbacks as some legitimate readers will not be able to leave reviews.  But as I said in a recent post , the review system is so broken that it was not only verging on being useless, but actually damaging Amazon's long-term viability as a business (which impacts everyone who sells on Amazon as well). The things I'll be interested to see now are: * Will the new filter apply retroactively?  It will be interesting to see if some books with say 50 reviews suddenly drop down to only having five. * Will it adversely affect new authors? A lot of new authors generate traction...

I've heard a lot about Amazon's review system having issues with fake reviews. Amazon has clearly acknowledged it is a problem and has gone so far as to sue vendors who pay for reviews . But I saw an example today that makes me think the system may be broken (pun intended, you'll see why) beyond all repair. A book was released which you can view here . Forgive me for not actually naming the book in this blog post as I don't want to generate free publicity for it by adding to its visibility in Google search returns. Anyway, it is crystal clear that the book is horrible. Readers feel ripped off and fume about how horrific the editing is. Now, one has to take bad reviews with the same grain of salt as good reviews - as any book can be maligned for no valid reason (perhaps someone has a personal conflict with the author in real life and decides to attack them through negative reviews).  Which while not the focus of this post, is another area Amazon falls short in - ...

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...