directions
Feb 27, 2013 Personal, Random Bits
I’ve been blogging here since 2005. I’ve enjoyed it and enjoyed the commenters who have come and gone (there are several whom I miss and hope they’re at least lurking). People have noticed that I’ve been fairly silent here since 2011. Coming back to the States was a bit of a shock and once re-acclimated, I began focusing more on my personal life and building my company. Or maybe I just find the States boring.
The company is moving forward, slowly, which is the normal speed for it. But exciting things are on the way: a new ebook, more blogging, a collaboration with a new author, reprinting Book 1. Seeing my baby growing makes me very happy. Makes for dull blogging though at some point I will do a series on self-publishing for sex workers.
Escort work is still fun but certainly not where the majority of my time and energy are directed. Mostly I’ve just been living my own life. Again, this makes for dull blogging. There are news bits and plenty of things that interest me sex work-wise but mostly…I’ve said a lot of what I want to say on relevant issues. Those poor horses are good and dead by now. Continuing to drum away is repeating myself and I hate doing that.
Continue to stick around for the random bits, a few rants, some thought pieces (my favorites). Not sure where this blog is going but it will continue to go and find its own way, as always. It still won’t ever become a sex blog or client expose. It will always be an atypical escort blog. So if that’s your thing, have patience.
Tags: amanda brooks, blogging, internet escort work, personal life, self publishing, sex writing
gratitude and growth
Jan 11, 2012 Adventures in Small Publishing, Writing
This love letter to my readers was supposed to be written three months ago. My blogging is as timely as ever.
October 16, 2011 was a very special day for me. It marked five years since Book 1 came out. It’s never been a hot seller by mainstream publishing standards, but it has most certainly sold. It’s still selling at a steady rate and I do very little to publicize it (that’s changing as of this year). It inspired other people to write similar books or do similar things. I like to think it was a moment where people connected to the industry saw there was a need to take it seriously as a business and they could create business-related offerings without unnecessary justifications or the worry that there wasn’t a market.
Would I rewrite it? Oh yes. But I recently re-read it and it wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered it being. (This has nothing to do with what I think about its value to others, only what I — the author — thinks about my own writing from the perspective of self-criticism.)
A lot has happened to me in the last five years. A lot has happened to the economy in the last five years. Still, that book has helped male readers stand in an escort’s shoes and has helped many woman understand what escort work requires from them before they take their first client. That was the whole point of the book. I get feedback from readers almost every day. It’s always humbling, especially the positive ones (this doesn’t mean I’m a free-advice hotline, though I always want to help). You’re all very welcome.
Tags: internet escort marketing, internet escort work, self publishing
at least i don’t write poetry
Aug 24, 2009 Adventures in Small Publishing, Random Bits
I’m not using Lulu.com either but catching up on my reading, I was very amused by this bit from a NY Times piece on self-publishing:
Indeed, said Robert Young, chief executive of Lulu Enterprises, based in Raleigh, N.C., a majority of the company’s titles are of little interest to anybody other than the authors and their families. “We have easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind,” Mr. Young said.
If you’re a fan of bad poetry, you know where to go!
The DIY trend is interesting. Due to technology (currently partially due to the economy), everyone is doing their own blogs, their own promotion, their own websites — whether escorts, writers/poets or small businesses. I like to think it’s giving power to the people but often it just loses one in the crowd. If you aren’t in a given online social circle, you have NO IDEA that other person exists because the pick-and-choose Internet is replacing mass media. It’s as isolating as living in a small village back when buggies had square wheels and only the rich had horses.*
Not that I’m crying over spilt mass media, I’m simply musing. I think a digital ceiling is forming.
*The square wheels thing is a comical exaggeration.
Tags: internet escorts, lulu.com, mass media, online marketing, self publishing
an agency offer
Apr 30, 2008 Adventures in Small Publishing, Writing
An interesting side-effect of winning an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards was that I got an e-mail from a literary agency. More properly, an intern at the agency. Still, a literary agency contacted me. Pretty nice and something I was very secretly wishing for. It was a heady moment.
Since she contacted me about two weeks before the Spitzer scandal broke, I knew it was genuine interest. Anything else I would’ve dismissed. And it was an agency I had considering querying (eons ago when I was querying agencies). So that was very good.
Tags: literary agency, publishing, self publishing, small publishing, writer's digest, Writing
amazon is a monopoly (apparently)
Apr 5, 2008 Adventures in Small Publishing
One of the funniest happenings in self-publishing land has been brewing over the last two weeks. None of my self-pub groups can concentrate on anything else. Their flailings make most escort discussion board threads look rational.
Amazon (one poster called it “the self-publisher’s best friend” – I have never subscribed to that notion) has decided to force the POD issue and only carry books by its own POD manufacturer BookSurge. I realize this means diddly for most of my blog readers. My amusement comes from something other than technical details.
Tags: amazon, book selling, books, POD, self publishing, small publishing, subsidy publishing
