Lost Up The Amazon

Whilst on holiday I received an e-mail from Lulu (the firm I used to publish and print my book) informing me that "Postcards From Nowhere" had been selected to take part in a special trial whereby - at absolutely no cost to me - it would become available via Amazon. I did what one normally does with e-mails that tell you you have won the Irish Lottery or inherited $4,765,287 from a distant relation who used to work for the Nigerian State Bank : I ignored it. Nevertheless, on my return to dry land, curiosity got the better of me and I did a search of Amazon and found nothing at all (that is not strictly true, I did find a book called "Erotic French Postcards by Philippe Jaenada and Serge Joncour which I have added to my Amazon wish list but that is another story entirely).

For want of nothing better to do last night, I did a wider Google search for my opus and, to my surprise, discovered it in the most unlikely places. My first hit took me to a site called "Poetry Connections" ("we .. showcase quality poetry to literature students and aficionados alike") where large as life and twice as unpoetical as ever is "Postcards From Nowhere". How it ever came to be featured on a poetry website is beyond me as it is notably lacking in rhyming couplets. Perhaps they think it's blank verse. My second hit was a site called "Brooders Beta Book Search" ("a simple, clean search engine for books") which appeared to be a more suitable placement as the book is nothing if it is not clean. Further investigation revealed that none of these strange organisations were offering to post my book to you themselves, all they were offering was a link to Amazon. When I followed the Amazon link I discovered why I had not found the book listed on Amazon.co.uk. The powers that be have decided to launch my book on the American market and not the British one. And there it was on amazon.com, available at the bargain price of only $31.70.

According to the quick currency conversions I have done, buying it from America would seem to be cheaper than buying it from Lulu in the first place which seems a little odd. I am not sure if the postage will be more : as print on demand it should be printed and posted from the same place. Whilst checking all this out on the Lulu site I noticed that the book has now crept up the rankings to 54,514th in their bestsellers' list. I was feeling quite proud of this achievement until I noticed that a book entitled "How To Make A Miniature Gypsy Wagon Out Of Matchsticks" was 29,000 places ahead of me. Perhaps that little book had not got lost up the Amazon. Now that "Postcards" has been found and now that it has gone global, fame and fortune might just be around the corner.