I got to number one on Amazon.co.uk! In Victorian Erotica, I am now the bestseller!
I am so excited right now! The last time I was (very temporarily!) number one I didn’t even notice and then I dropped down to two, and then of course further. Now I’m there, and in my own country’s Amazon!
Buy it here! If you’re in the U.S, you can buy it here!
It happened! My cherry has been popped! I received my first bad review on Amazon!
Oh well. That five star review monopoly had to be lost at some point.
I honestly don’t mind the criticisms the writer has of the book; I actually think some of the things she says are valid. They are choices I made when I was writing the novel, and perhaps, in hindsight, I should have made different ones. I’ve written three books since then, and I’m almost finished with a fourth. Each book has taught me something different about plotting, characterisation and pacing – some of the most important parts of constructing a book. I’m going to be learning how to write for as long as I write, that much I know.
It’s just the mean-spirited contempt that the review was written with that makes me pause. She – and I assume that the person who reviewed the book was female – seems to have gone out of her way to be as offensive as possible while giving her opinion, down to accusing my friends and family of being the ones giving the positive reviews!
My friends and family largely have no idea that I write romantic spanking stories. They have no idea that I write at all, let alone that I’ve been published. I can’t tell people; I run the risk of getting in trouble at work and I don’t think that my parents would be overjoyed at the thought of my choice of genre although I know that they would be proud of me for succeeding in attracting the attention of a reputable publisher.
I think that particular barb, of all those that she so callously threw, hurt the most because it was so far off the mark. I’m a big girl, both literally and figuratively speaking. I can take constructive criticism. What I can’t take, and won’t take, and refuse to tolerate is mean spirited nastiness.
This review has reviewed only three books since 2011, and chooses not to give her name. Or a pseudonym. Or even a nickname. Two of the three reviews are of one star. Mine is the only book she’s reviewed in her extensive experience that had been given two stars.
I have to wonder if my book is that bad (which of course, it could very well be) or whether I was unlucky enough to catch the attention of a bitter, unhappy, mean-spirited person who gets some kind of enjoyment from deliberately confusing constructive criticism with vomiting up spurious insults. A person who is not brave enough to sign their name, or any other name, to their writing, unlike myself or the other authors she has taken pleasure in leaving an unpleasant review for.
Well, I’ll probably never know the answer to that question. But as annoying as that two star review is to me, I know that she’s far more annoyed than I’ll ever be by the “amateur and disappointing” Spanking The Governess.
After all, she paid a whole $4.99 for it!
Just think, if she’s bought it when it was released for $2.99, I’d have made far less money from her!
“Very enjoyable”, “a great plot and sweet characters”, “suspense, action and romance” or “amateur and disappointing”?
Decide for yourself at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk where Spanking The Governess is currently sitting at #2 in the Victorian Erotica section and #4 in the Historical Erotica section!
Apparently, my little book made it to number one in the Victorian erotica chart! If it wasn’t for the lovely people at Blushing Books, I wouldn’t have known anything about it, though! Despite my near-obsessive checking of Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, I missed the moment completely!
The book is hovering nicely in the top ten at the moment and I am completely humbled by that. When you look at the other writers who are releasing books in this particular sub-genre, I have some very stiff competition indeed and to think that people are buying my book as well as their book is…well, the best word I have for it is humbling.
Still – I wish I had a screenshot of it being number one, though!
I am so happy and excited! Or at least, I would be if I wasn’t so tired!
Trying to hold down a demanding full time job and write a book is so hard! All I want to do is write, but after I get home from work all I want to do is lay on the sofa and watch Parks and Recreation.
Tomorrow I get to be a published author. Somebody took my book seriously enough to offer to publish it and the sequels that follow it. They didn’t have to – they weren’t being kind. They thought it had potential to sell. They thought I had potential, and that’s not something that I get told very often.
I don’t expect that my book will sell that many copies – I’m not exactly best seller material, after all. I do hope that I make the company a profit so that it repays their trust in me, and that they keep wanting to publish my books in the future. I like the idea of being able to call myself a real author.
I’ve written fan fiction before now, and lengthy stuff too, regularly hitting over 80000 words on stories that have got some great reviews. I’ve self published some contemporary short stories under the name Eleanor Bennett (and made some – a few – alright, four – sales!). Tomorrow, though, will be the first time that I’ll think of myself as a writer.
I think tomorrow is going to be a really great day.
Spanking The Governess, my first novel with the lovely people from Blushing Books, is released in two days’ time!
You can read the first chapter for free here!
The new governess at remote and forbidding Briarstone Manor is not whom or what she claims to be. But prior to Elizabeth’s arrival at the great, sad house, no one else had been able to get through to or control the lonely little girl, the supposed daughter of a peer of the realm, who is need of governing.
Since Elizabeth speaks French, the girl’s native tongue, they quickly bond. Being an inquisitive young woman, however, the new governess all too soon discovers a trove of erotic literature, with an emphasis on spanking, secreted on the premises by the lord of the manor, Joseph, Marquess of Hamilton.
Joseph is a man torn between his parental duty to a daughter of questionable origin, and his loathing for Briarstone, least favorite of all his estates. He also is a man who takes a very dim view of a young, pretty woman snooping around to find books she has no business viewing, and also a man who knows exactly what to do when such outrageous behavior does occur.
When she is caught, though, and taken to task, Elizabeth has to wonder—is being spanked, however strictly, by the stern and handsome lord truly a punishment at all? And what will become of her when Joseph discovers the shameful secret of her true identity?
Come join Louise Taylor as she takes us back more than a century and a half to a time when a man was master of the house, and an employee’s place was, very often, across his lap, to find the answers.
Read the first chapter for free here!
I’m very excited about getting this first novel out and seeing what people think. There are two more novels in this series at present, and about 15000 words of the fourth lurking on my hard drive.
louisetaylorlove 