Crazy Problems

My efforts to join ARC readers groups on Goodreads and Facebook (yes, I bit the bullet) resulted in three positive responses. I managed to send a PDF to one of the respondents, although calibre marked it as "Microsoft Edge PDF", which I don't understand. I tried opening it, and it worked fine, but then again, it's residing on my system. I don't know what it will do when someone else tries opening it.

The second person hasn't responded yet with an email address. A third person, this one on Facebook, tried messaging me her email address, but she couldn't. It seems that Facebook "pages" can't receive messages. Ahh, the fun of using a pen name. I cloned an author Facebook page off my own account, which really was the only way it could be accomplished. I can't open a new account under my pen name, because they may very well ask for identity verification. (It's true; it happened to me once. Luckily, I was really me.)

I completely understand why a person would not want to post their email address on any social media site, so I replied to her post and asked her to shoot me an email. I don't care if anyone sees my author email address. Well, she hasn't emailed me. And why would she go through the bother? This experience does not bode well for my Facebook pleas. 

At least with Goodreads I get an email when someone responds, so I don't have to try remembering which groups I joined and keep checking my posts for replies. 

Which brings up another issue. I have FAR too many email addresses. The first service I used to create my author email was AOL. I never use it anymore because I later heard that Proton was a more secure service, so I set up a second account under that. I also thought I could use it to send newsletters, which was hopelessly naive. 

Then MailerLite notified me that Google now requires its users to have an email address associated with their website. After days of frustration, I finally managed to get that accomplished (with the superb assistance of the Google Workspace associates). Now I have a third author email account. My issue is, I can't ever remember which addresses I used to create accounts on various sites. 

I currently have all three email accounts open, just to be sure I don't miss something important. That's in addition to my two "real" email accounts, which are also open. (I also have an Outlook account, but have never had reason to use it ~ oh, and an Xfinity email account that I didn't ask for.)

As far as Facebook groups, a couple of them are useless. One is apparently for "steamy" books, and the other one requires an author to read three other authors' books in order to get reads of her own. I'm not interested in that. I don't even read for fun much anymore, much less for "work". 

Maybe, if Library Thing doesn't turn down my giveaway, I could get some reads from that. All I know is, I'm not going to keep refreshing my email or checking Facebook to look for stragglers. If nothing hits in the first day or two, it's not going to hit. Posts get buried very quickly. 

I don't care that my engagement was paltry; at least I tried. And I'm growing tired of this endeavor. If I'm lucky, I'll get one review out of the deal ~ not to assume it'll be a good review.

I always take time off between novellas, so I don't know what I'll be doing with my time. Probably just blogging, even more than usual.