I write for a living. Well actually, now that I think about
it, that’s not true. I sell books for a living, I write books for fun.
I don’t sell any old book mind, I only sell the ones that I
write (although if I like your book I will chuck a tweet out there for the
world to read, well the 1500 people on it who follow me on twitter that is,) so
anyway, I sell books for a living, and I sell those books on the Amazon Kindle.
The other day I heard that the world’s population is seven
billion. Now, by anyone’s imagination, even a Wall Street banker’s, that is an
awful lot of people. I wasn’t sure if it was true, so I Googled it, and found
this site:
This site is a weird kind of place where you can watch the world
population clock spit out an ever increasing number as all over the world
babies pop out to add to the delight that is mankind.
For a while, looking at the number depressed me as I considered
the famine and disease and pain and suffering in the world. But then, after a minute or two, it dawned on
me that all over the world the exact same number of babies that was popping out
was equalled by people having joyous sex and I delighted in the fun and ecstasy
that all that entails.
And I was happy, for a while, and then I became depressed
again, because I realised I wasn’t one of the joyous people having sex.
But anyway, as I was saying, I sell books for a living.
So I looked at the seven billion people in the world (not literally,
that would be a worse job than selling books), and I thought,
“If zero point one percent of that seven billion bought my
book, I’d be able to retire from selling books, and I’d just be able to write them.”
So after thinking about all this brain numbing stuff I
decided to have a look at my Kindle Direct Publishing page (this is the place
where I find out how many books I’ve not managed to sell each month), and while
I was there I spotted something that I’d never seen before... my books are on
sale in India.
Now, I knew there are a lot of people in India. But, just to
be sure I looked on Wikipedia (because everything is true there, I know this
because someone told me so on Wikipedia) and it told me that there are 1.2
billion people in India right now.
1.2 billion people (I don’t know how many are being born or
having sex and I quite frankly don’t want to think about it).
Now I’m guessing, with a fair degree of certainty that they
don’t all have kindles, not even the old dodgy ones that used to leave ink on
your fingers.
But what I am guessing is that an awful lot of them do. So,
I’ve discovered a massive market that speaks my language (I’ve not sold many
books in Italy or Germany I can tell you).
And what am I doing to sell my books there? Nothing, not a
jot, nada, nowt, कुछ नहीं
(that’s Hindi for nothing apparently).
So what do i do? Do I try to sell books in
India via twitter? It is a world wide platform, but to be honest, twitter
doesn't work for selling books. It's a lazy way of feeling like you've done
something to promote your book, nobody buys after a tweet, not even a bird.
Do Iwrite a blog? Well, I supose that's what
I'm doing right now, but i doubt this will sell any books either, they never
do!
No, there is nothing else for it, I'm going to
have research the Indian market, track down some popular blogs and trade sites
and I'm going to have work hard to get a toe hold in potentially the biggest
English speaking market in the world.
And in the mean time, I'm going to have to
figure out how to find some time to do some writing, because that is, after
all, all I really want to be doing.
My latest book, Rear View Mirror, a tale of lager, love, the lost and the lonely on the streets of Liverpool is available here.
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