I heard from a potential customer the other day who had tried to buy ‘Manhunt’. This persistent soul had tried each of the three online stores where ‘Manhunt’ is available, Smashwords, PayLoadz, and Lulu and had been put off by the registration process on two of them and was unable to use the PayPal software on the third.

Jack's not happy

Jack's not happy

When you’re a self-published author with no reputation and no marketing budget, selling books is not easy (even at $1.99!) People don’t know you’re there, or, if they happen to stumble across you (like you, Dear Reader) they have no particular confidence that your book will be worth buying – there are no reviews, their friends or favourite blogs haven’t recommended it, and the book is self-published, so it doesn’t even have the quality assurance of some unpaid intern at a publishing house having cast their eye over it. Yet some people will take a chance and sport a couple of bucks on the possibility of discovering a new author.

For these brave and wonderful souls to be thwarted by the inadequacies of a poorly-written e-commerce site, is an absolute catastrophe for the writer. It is also incredibly bad business for the book-selling sites. What on earth are they thinking of deanding a registration to buy a $2 e-book? And don’t they ever test their software?

Yet the sites do actually work – sometimes – and some people do make it through the ordeal and buy my book. If you’re one, you have my heartfelt thanks for your efforts. I sincerely hope you enjoy the book.

Anyone else who has been having difficulty buying ‘Manhunt’ please let me know. I’m looking into alternative was to sell this book, believe me.