I Have The Weirdest Urge to Buy School Supplies

 First... I know you're thinking the cheese done slid right off Mercy's cracker with that title.

Second... that is entirely beside the point.

Thirdly... and it has nothing to do with the title... stay focused please.

But yeah. Youngest kiddo is getting ready for back to college in less than a month. We bought one text book to save them about a hundred bucks over on the campus bookstore. It came in today. They don't need anything else.

And I'm struggling with that.

I shouldn't be. This will be the second year I don't have any kids in public school. Not a single one. My oldest started school in 1996. I had done the back to school thing for 28 years. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS!

Last year we did need a few things. They're an art major, so it was mostly art supplies and some basic odds and ends. But this year... nothing. Maybe a notebook. 

And it's freaking me right the hell out.

I know. I know. It's a habit that will fade as we get closer to them flying the nest and adulting for real. 

But the urge to go buy crayons and glue sticks is still very strong.

Or maybe it's not the urge to buy the damn things so much as a kind of grief for not buying them. My oldest three kids are all in their 30s now. This was my late life baby. I would have been done 12 years ago if not for them. I know my time with them is coming to an end. And... well... we grieve what we grieve. No more school uniforms which we all hated. No more character backpacks. No more lunch boxes. No more pencil boxes. No more planners that never get used. No more bus schedules. No more little kid coming in hot and smelling of sunshine.

I could buy myself some new fountain pens and get a new planner for next year. But it's not the same. Not the same at all.

S-I-G-H-S!!!!!!

So, while we're all roasting in a corn sweat heat wave I have book news of a sort.

Mostly it involves where you can and can't get books right now. Not new books. I keep trying to write. It all comes out shitty. But that's okay, I can't write for the current market so what is the actual point?

Due to changes to the world economies and (apparently) the emerging censorship issues in the US, I've pulled all books from Barnes & Noble and Apple. 

B&N had hidden half of my books from search completely. I couldn't find them at all except through the direct link they gave me. Books that didn't have any real erotic content among the titles. So, yeah, they just randomly disappeared, so, I decided I didn't want to play that game. 

With Apple I noticed that all of my books were pulled from half of their worldwide stores. I checked to see why, apparently there was a memo I missed about complying with new EU rules regarding the sales of stuff. Stuff that I expect the book dealer to do on my behalf. In short, if I'm reading that correctly, I was supposed to register as a trader with my phone number and website. I don't have an LLC for my pen name. I don't feel comfortable putting my real name and phone number out in public anywhere. And I'm actually confused about the "trader" part... so, I rarely ever make more than 30 bucks there a month so, I pulled everything. 

I've never sold many books on either site but it does bother me that the WIDE world of book sales seems to be shrinking.

Right now that leaves me with Amazon and Kobo. And my payhip store. I might go back to Draft 2 Digital for Smashwords and the EU stores they have. MIGHT! I am making a decent bit from Kobo Plus now. Nothing like back in the day with KU. I've had ten titles in KU for two and a half months with very little to show for it. 

I mean, I have about half my backlist that never sells a single copy, or the equivalent in page reads. So, honestly, I don't know what to do anymore. 

So, until August this is how I'll stay. With just Amazon and Kobo. I do need to drop prices in my Payhip store. The ten titles will fall out of KU between August 15 and 25th. If I put anything back into KU it will be Beyond Complicated and the four Scrimmage books. I don't know. We'll see.

Or I might disappear those five books completely. Pretend they never happened. We shall truly see.

Will talk at you later.

Peace

Mercy