AMAZON ANACONDA

It's all very interesting.

Amazon is offering "Bronze Inside and Out: A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver" for a cheaper price than they are buying the book for. Evidently they are using it as a "loss leader" to get your name and address into their database.

But there were too many buyers! They had not realized that there are a few hundred people who want to buy this book! They were losing money!

So they said they'd run out of copies because they were "unavailable" and they didn't know when any would ever be available again. They made the book sound like some sort of mirage.

So I posted an "author's review" of Amazon on the Amazon website.

Shortly, one (ONE, UNO) copy reappeared on the database. No message to me. The nonsense about "not being available" went away.

My publisher doesn't tell me what she had to do with this. I told her. Then she took the afternoon off.

Normally U of Calgary Press authors get a 40% discount on any U of Calgary Press books, including the ones they write. BUT because I want to sell my own books at readings and book-signings around the state and the national distributor, Michigan State University, doesn't want to mess around with me because they don't quite believe that Montana really exists anyway, the U of Calgary Press will ship me books direct BUT my discount will be diminished to 30%. No royalty, of course. (My royalty is 5% of the U of Calgary Press NET profit. That is, for every $1,000 they make, I make $50.)

You know that song, "Mothers, Don't Let Your Sons Be Cowboys"? Well, it's good advice for the mothers of potential authors as well. You won't be the ant -- you'll be the aphid.