Publishing Online Via Booksie

Publishing Online Via Booksie, guest post by Michael Sellings


A year ago, I became the recipient of the unwelcome condition of septic shock, which involves an infection causing the body’s immune system to self-destruct, resulting in circulatory collapse, and organ failure. Septic shock is the number one cause of death in ITUs, kills 20 million annually, world wide, and has a 40% mortality-rate. The symptoms are initially flu-like, but very early on, a delay in recognition and treatment increases mortality considerable.
 
Very soon after this life-changing experience, with time on my hands, still quite ill and confined to the house, during a cold winter, I decided to write as detailed a diary of the experience that I could remember, and called it “Ringing God’s Doorbell”.
 
Friends, relatives and the sister in charge at the Isle of Wight ITU suggested I publish the diary, and Jo Linsdell gave me several suggestions for publishing on free websites.
 
Being the wrong side of 70, my computing abilities amount to switching  on, writing letters, surfing, and sending E-mails, (although many of the latter end up wafting around in the digital universe, never to be seen again!)
 
The first two application forms I tried, reminded me of the BBC’s John Humphrey’s utterance, after he had stuck thousands of polystyrene balls on a filing cabinet in the name art..”I want two hours of my life back!”. They were difficult to navigate so I gave up.
 
Booksie.com’s application form proved very simple to fill in, just requiring minimal information and a password, so with the aid of my wife, I uploaded “Ringing God’s Doorbell” to the website. Its inclusion was immediate, and subsequently each day the number of “reads” are reported. To date after just over a month, the diary has had 69 reads, which didn’t seem many, until I compared with other submissions at the same time. Even more flattering, within the first few days, Booksie contacted me with the message that I had followers or “fans”, who would like to have knowledge of further work to be submitted. Not being a fan of the whole social media thing, I declined the opportunity of being “nearly famous”!
 
I will be submitting a follow-up diary called “An Imperfect Future” fairly soon, which deals with the subsequent months following release from hospital. It was almost as bumpy a ride as the initial emergency, with 3 more hospital admissions.
 
Apparently, there is a mechanism by which a story uploaded onto Booksie can be “cross-pollinated” onto twitter, facebook and Amazon, but that seems beyond me at the moment, so I’ll have to enjoy my brief moment of fame just on Booksie.

Michael Sellings. You can read Ringing God’s Doorbell at http://www.booksie.com/michael_sellings

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