The Five Stages of Grief, after one of your books is returned on Amazon:
Denial – Amazon must have made a mistake, or someone just accidentally hit the return button. It will be fixed soon.
Anger – The cheapskate bought the book, read it quickly and returned it. I hate cheaters like that.
Bargaining – If I could just talk to that reader and explain things, I am sure he or she would re-purchase the book. Maybe if I do a re-write and re-publish, it will never happen again.
Depression – What did I expect, I am a terrible writer and should just give up.
Acceptance – Big deal. My return rate is low, so it doesn’t mean anything. You can’t please everyone. I’ll bet Shakespeare had some unhappy customers, too.
To be honest, returns don’t bother me – I was just looking for something amusing to blog about, and an excuse to do a meme (the drawing is from the internet, the text is mine). :)
Actually my return rate is low, about 0.5%. And it is true, you can’t please everyone. I’m not sure about the Shakespeare thing, though.
Anyway, here is the book that that was returned, and thus motivated this blog. It’’s return rate is about 1.5%. It even did pretty well as a Freebie, back in those halcyon days of Dec 2015.
It's Time for a Road Trip – On the Road with Bronco Billy
It's April, and the sun is beginning to come on noticeably stronger in the more temperate regions. Spring is here now, and that brings on thoughts of ROAD TRIP. Sure, it is still a bit early, but you can still start making plans for your next road trip with help of “On the Road with Bronco Billy”. Sit back and go on a ten day trucking trip in a big rig, through western North America, from Alberta to Texas, and back again. Explore the countryside, learn some trucking lingo, and observe the shifting cultural norms across this great continent. Then, come spring, try it out for yourself.
It’s, 99 cents otherwise, but is free every 3 months or so, if you want to watch for it and save a buck.
Amazon U.S.: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon U.K.: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon Germany: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Here’s the summary:
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What follows is an account of a ten day journey through western North America during a working trip, delivering lumber from Edmonton Alberta to Dallas Texas, and returning with oilfield equipment. The writer had the opportunity to accompany a friend who is a professional truck driver, which he eagerly accepted. He works as a statistician for the University of Alberta, and is therefore is generally confined to desk, chair, and computer. The chance to see the world from the cab of a truck, and be immersed in the truck driving culture was intriguing. In early May 1997 they hit the road.
Some
time has passed since this journal was written and many things have
changed since the late 1990’s. That renders the journey as not just
a geographical one, but also a historical account, which I think only
increases its interest.
We were fortunate to have an
eventful trip - a mechanical breakdown, a near miss from a tornado,
and a large-scale flood were among these events. But even without
these turns of fate, the drama of the landscape, the close-up view of
the trucking lifestyle, and the opportunity to observe the cultural
habits of a wide swath of western North America would have been
sufficient to fill up an interesting journal.
The
travelogue is about 20,000 words, about 60 to 90 minutes of reading,
at typical reading speeds.
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