Friday 5 October 2012

News for Beerubaraoyaji

Hi Folks

I've been away for a while and totally 'off my blog' - needed to recharge after a hard few months of work.

Since my last post, I've had a flood of downloads and a few great comments. Thanks for the positive feedback folks, it really makes a world of difference. I have since found a few posts on the subject of bad reviews and have come to terms with the darker side of e-publishing and publishing in general. In related news, there has also been a lot going on in the media about trolling and cyber-bullying and it would appear that all is not well with this side of social media and the internet. It just seems that it is something that you have to learn to live with. As far as e-books are concerned, the problem pre-dates the internet by hundreds of years so I am definitely not alone here so I'm feeling much better about the whole thing really.

In other news, I've been working on the band novel again and have been having fun with the characters. Still a way to go on this one yet, but things are moving forward.

I have had a few downloads on Kindle in Europe, most particularly Germany and am looking forward to increasing my presence in this and other countries over time. Italy, Spain and France are also having a look - still slow traffic but steady. It feels good to reach a different audience. I love the idea that my work is relevant in non-English speaking countries. I think one of the main attractions is that the novel offers some insight into Japanese language and culture without sugar coating things - as well as good practice in English. Lucky I went to the effort to commission the professional edits really.

On another front, I have been dabbling in music composition lately and have uploaded a ton of stuff on Soundcloud. Two of the tracks, 'A Mouse is on the Table' and 'Keitai Friends' have clocked up enough hits for soundcloud to offer me a free conversion to the new more social-network-friendly version if I can top 1000 downloads in the next 5 weeks. The same goes for whoever is following me at the time. I have re-posted the tracks on my blog in case any of my readers are soundcloud users and would like a listen - and to get a chance to upgrgrade to the new platform. You could always follow me if you were really keen.

Lastly, I have been able to generate enough energy to think about honouring a recent commitment to do a special visit-Kyoto post that a reader sort of requested a few posts ago. I'll get to work on this soon so look out for it.

Thats all for now.

Beerubaraoyaji