In the past, when I was a far more active musician, I used to help organize charity concerts. It sounds noble, but it’s not, not really, not in my case, anyway. If you know how much fun it is being on stage you might understand. Doing something with other people who like doing the same thing is great. It is an alternative motive. This does not make it wrong. I consider any motive for collecting money for a needy cause a good thing.
So, I guess you are now wondering what my alternative motive is behind my charity books?
Like most things, it’s never straight forward, lots of things influenced me. I guess it all started when Amazon’s rating system went global. For me, as an author I embraced the idea. I thought it meant, if I sell a book in England, its rating would be added to my German, or American ratings – good or bad.
But it didn’t work like that. My positive American ratings stayed in America; my verified positive German ones stayed there. The only rating that went global was a none verified negative one. I mean, it went GLOBAL. It was on every platform.
So, I began to write to Amazon, asking them how their system worked, receiving one standard reply after the next. On the 27th of January this year, however, I received confirmation that the rating was in fact, invalid and not verified. I was delighted. A short-lived joy, because the two main bodies KDP and Community, both then wrote back saying the other party is responsible for taking any action.
I was back at square one. What good is confirmation when no one does anything?
But this blog is not about my discussion with Amazon, but the reason for the idea of the charity. As it was my book ‘I am GoD connecting’ had also been rated on GoodReads.com. (A site, I have since become a fan of, and highly recommend.)
I joined GoodReads.com and took time to write and thank those people who had taken time to write a rating. I was writing to complete strangers who had enjoyed my book! It was a nice sensation.
One day, however, one of them wrote back mentioning there were some grammatical mistakes in ‘I am GoD Indigenous’, and I was surprised, because I really do have a very good and very reliable proofreader… But still, I looked into it, and found that on checking, he was right. This led me to check further into the book and I noticed other silly mistakes. So, I wrote to Angela and asked her how she was doing, how she was managing under the Covid Lockdown. Indirectly trying to find out if she was ill or (as I feared) bored with proofreading my work.
It was then that she admitted to being diagnosed with MS. It was a dreadful moment for me. It made no sense. Here was a good mother, a successful marriage, (I originally wrote a good wife – but it’s really not my position to say this. I think a good marriage says it better, and more) an honored teacher, someone who spent her free time helping the needy and homeless kids in her city… suddenly being hit with something as awful as this.
Well, I wasn’t going to just sit there and feel sorry, because that doesn’t pay the rent. My book sales had dived anyway, due to what I considered to be Amazon’s inability to remove a confirmed invalid rating … (An issue that hasn’t yet been solved but I am still working on it – don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what Amazon does – sometimes however, things don’t go exactly as planned; things do get lost in the post 😀 ) … So I came up with the idea of donating the money I will make on the sales.
Some authors give their books away for free – promotion – they call it, but I have learnt over the years if it’s free or cheap people have no respect for it.
So. Yes, it is almost like giving it away, as I receive nothing, but still people have to pay for it, only now the money is sent to the Rocky Mountain MS center.
And what is in it for me? What is my alternative motive this time? Simple – I get the chance to show Angela, my proofreader just a little bit of the goodness she has shown to everyone else, and who knows, someone might like the book too.
