Quote:
Originally Posted by conan50
My concern is that you are describing someone too dumb to read a book lol!
I also need actual readers who will do reviews and recommend books they like. I've yet to have someone say:
"Man, you have to buy this book with the awesome swirly blue cover, the story is crap, but check out that cover!" :-)
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Guys:
YOU'RE depressed? Lemme tell you a little story:
Once upon a time, a lovely kind princess owned an eBook formatting company. The princess worked hard, and so did all her loyal retainers. BUT, the Princess was frustrated, because she was asked the SAME questions, over and over and over. So, she decided to bear down, and do some work. She created HUNDREDS of very clear, precise, FAQ articles.
But to the Princess' sadness, nobody read them! At first, she refused to believe this. No, she said: that can't be right. Surely, all these authors-cum-publishers want to know how to do everything! Surely, clicking an FAQ article is easier than sending me an entire email, asking me the question? But she studied her Royal Webmaster Tool Reports (occasionally and inexplicably showing up in Indonesian, mind you), and lo...the truth could not be denied. The people of her Kingdom (well, her Princess-dom), readeth not the Proclamations on the FAQ.
The Princess comforted herself, telling herself that she shared one thing with many of her first-time clients: she was an
extremely UNREAD author!
But, she knew that this had to be addressed, somehow. So, the Princess said to herself, "Self," (she said), "We should put these same FAQ articles in an easily-readable format, so that we can
send them to the questioners!! How brilliant is that! We will
send one to EVERY questioner, in PDF, and lo--they will self-serve!" No "going" here or there; answers DELIVERED to you, like PIZZA!!
However, after months of labor, effort, toil and sweat, when the
Royal Proclamation of the Handbook, as it was come to be known, was completed, and was being sent out to EVERY personage in the Princess-dom, lo...still, the people readeth not. Even with carefully-crafted bookmarks, an interactive TOC, fully-searchable...nada. Zip, zein zilch: the Handbook languished, unread by the People, and the Princess and her retainers fell about in lamentations. For while the Princess loved her people, there was only one Princess, and to answer those 300 or so people per day was a bit
hard on the Princess, even with the help of her loyal minions. Especially given that the Princess had spent hundreds of hours--hundreds!!--creating the FAQ and the Handbook. Possibly
more than hundreds of hours; possibly even in the thousand-hour category.
The Princess, by now looking a bit
bald-ish in spots, from
pulling her hair out, had a ridiculous inspiration. Was it possible--possible, she wondered--that the People would read...
a COMIC BOOK???? Would they read that, where they had repeatedly failed to read the GINORMOUS FAQ, the Handbook, the READ ME FIRST that the Princess sent out with Every Single Royal quote?
So, the Princess--who, despite being balding, is nothing if not stupidly tenacious--set out to learn how to create comic books. She found an artist she liked, with already-existing, affordable artwork. She learned how to put these images in comic-panels. She learned how to create dialogue bubbles and effects. And, after more hair-pulling, she managed to create a simple, Marvel-is-not-calling-you-anytime-soon 4-page Comic book.
And the Princess, also having learnt much from watching her People and their struggles with sales over the previous 5 years, put no cover on the thing--let the INSIDE shine through, with the bright (BRIGHT!!) colors, etc., and slapped it
on the homepage of her Royal Website.
And Lo: the People rejoiced! They downloaded
the Royal Comic. Not just a little--a LOT. The same People who NEVER read the instructions, NEVER read the FAQ, NEVER read the READ ME FIRST, didn't read the Quotes and would ask the same questions over and over about which they had already asked, and been directed to the specific articles in the FAQ, (just to get the SAME EXACT canned response in an email--which sent them away happy, mind you), downloaded the Royal comic. By the
hundreds. In a span of a few days, mind you.
The (reasonably happier) Princess now spends her days trying to figure out how to put her heretofore myriad instructions about this and that --like how to install Kindle Previewer, how to install/use ADE, etc.--into COMIC BOOK FORMAT.
Here endeth the lesson. Take from it what you will. But seriously: the last 5 years have dramatically changed the Princess' view of the People. And has added to the Princess' view of the
Importance of Being Covered.
Hitch