I've posted about publishing a book on Amazon here before on Amazon:   The Other Road eBook : Caswell, Ian: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store To celebrate me eventually having time to rewrite the start of the story it will be available on Kindle FREE for five days from 1st May.  A paperback version will be available shortly too.  I initially worked hard to keep the word count down, because the publisher I had been going to use recommended a 30,000 word limit, their logic being that this would keep the purchase cost down, thus encouraging more people to give a new author a chance.  30,000 words was never going to happen, but it did give me some sort of guide.  Given the sales of the book so far, I can confirm that cutting down the word count does not work. My efforts to keep the word count down led that first part of the story to be incredibly information dense, with huge monologues etc.  Although I was always unhappy with this, I thought ignoring the ex...

 My old Astra was getting to be a real pain.  The noise from somewhere underneath continued (see my original write up on it), but additional, hard to trace problems were also building up.  It had started to leak somewhere around the boot too, yet I could see no good reason for this since the seals were good.  This got to the point where, over time, the recess for the spare wheel filled up and the water then sloshed around sufficiently that it started to soak through the foam of the rear seat, making it damp.  The inside of the windows were often dripping with moisture too, and demisting took an age.  Last autumn and winter here were exceptionally wet, and this was a constant source of annoyance.  Since building an extension on our house a few years I no longer have direct access to my garage, and have to work on the car out in the street. I have to admit that although the bodywork was in good condition, the constant niggles with this car, most of which...