KU, Page Read Vacuum, and the Timesuck That is Writing Forums

As you know, I had the Once Upon a Djinn books on sale.  And this is the point at which I should be seeing residual Page Reads mounting.  Except I'm not. 

So, I says to myself this morning... 'Self?' I says.  "I wonder what the hell is up with Kindle Unlimited?  And finding no answer in my head, I went in search of people who were perhaps in the know about such things.  And the only place I know of to go is the KDP community forum.

Yeah, yeah, if you know me, you know I don't do forums.  At least not in any participatory way and rarely in a read-and-learn way.  (Long story... old story... blah and yawn.)

Anyway, I was scrolling though the forum, trying to discern the answer to my question.  I clicked on a post that I thought might help.  Nope.  Someone asking a question that might've been answered by doing what I was doing, and then getting a 'well, duh' answer and then getting her undies in a wad because she felt like she was being bullied.  Clicked on another... Same same.  Then I clicked on a thread because I wanted to laugh at the responses to the question of 'why is everyone so vicious here?' (and they spelled vicious wrong... on a writing forum... derp.)  Then I got sucked into a post that's subject was so horribly written it made me want to gouge out my eyes.  You know, just for kicks.

And then I remembered I was supposed to be trying to answer a question and I left because being in there is suck a huge waste of time.  Which is pretty much what happens when I go into any forum lately. 

Yes, I could've tried searching the topic.  I've done that in the past and get more useless hits than useful ones.  Sometimes it's better to just scroll down the list and hope for the best. 

Anyway... again... I did find that other writers seem to be in the same position (i.e. Kindle page reads are down), but no real clue as to why.  It could be that so much drek is floating around in the program and readers are being so consistently burned by crap that they're not using KU as much as they used to.  That's my guess anyway.  Not sure what the answer is.  I know I don't want to go wide, but it may be the only answer. 

The problem with even exploring that is my Kindle Select dates aren't up for an entire series any time soon.  And it's such a pain in the ass to go through all my books and change all the links so they don't point to Amazon.  Ugh.

I also noted, in the forums, that the general consensus is ads are paying for themselves, but no one is seeing sales like they used to.  So, I guess we're all in this together.  I'm guessing again but I think it's the glut of  potential reading material. 

Imagine you're in a stadium full of people and you're trying to find one person you might want to be friends with but you've never met them and you aren't sure what any of them are like.  That one is wearing a brightly colored shirt, but when you step up to him, you discover he's boring.  You overhear a woman talking and she sounds interesting, so you step up and find out she's kind of repeating the same things you've heard over and over.  There might be a good one in there somewhere, but finding them is hard and the harder things are the less likely we are to do them.  And so you get a headache and you go home.

I imagine that's kind of like what being a reader these days is like.

Wish I had better information for you this morning.  Like I said, I tried.  I may try to research this more after I've had some more coffee and the memory of the forum timesuck has faded a bit.

What say you?

Meandering Post about Forums and the Drug of People Reading my Books.

I've been reading the forum boards at KDP again.  I had this idea that I would jump back in and be social and do some networking.  Then I read the boards and remembered why I stopped going there.

Oh, I'm sure there are many fine people who post on those boards.  I can see them.  I also see the not-so-fine people, though, and they make the experience more of a headache than I am willing to subject myself to.

This time it was a person slamming self-published authors as being particularly stupid because why would anyone spend all that money on editing when you can't possibly hope to recoup it.

Then there was the person slamming anyone who is enrolled in Kindle Select as being particularly stupid because it's so limiting and Amazon is the anti-christ or something.  

Maybe I am particularly stupid.  Wouldn't be the first time.  But then I remember each time I see someone read an entire book's worth of pages on Kindle Unlimited, or the whole damn series one after the other, or my entire backlist.  And my heart soars and I know someone somewhere is reading words I put down.

It's like a drug.  People are reading my words.  And they're enjoying them enough to read the whole book or the whole series or all of the books.  Now, there's a high.  And it's one that doesn't dull my senses or muddle my brain or make me drive like an asshole or make me do stupid things.  (Unless you're among those who count self-publishing as a stupid thing.  In which case, I say to you: Bugger Off.)

Sure, I wish more people were buying and reading my books.  I wish everyone who read one enjoyed it so much they were excited enough to buy more.  Or that they could afford to buy more.  (I get the whole budget thing.  I'm living it.  Which is why my books are as inexpensive as I can make them without screwing myself.) What writer doesn't want more people reading their books? 

Anyway, I'm off of reading the boards again.  So much for being social and networking with the ultimate goal of selling more books.  I don't have the intestinal fortitude for it anymore.  I'd rather spend my time writing books, editing books, and publishing books.  The readers will come somehow or other, and I will revel in them.