My Co-worker Just Published a Book

The cover kind of looks like this a little bit. (image via wikimedia)

“This is it,” a female coworker said as I passed her cubicle.  She was reading a paperback novel with a weird alien and an attractive woman on the cover.  My coworker probably should have been on the computer doing actual work, but I didn’t mention that.

“This is what?” I asked.

“The book,” she said.

“Your book?” I said.  She didn’t strike me as the science fiction type.

“No, it’s ________ book.”  I didn’t recognize the name she’d said.

“Whose book?” I said, still confused.

“You know, from the ____________ department.”

I still didn’t know who she was talking about, but when she showed me the author’s photo on the back cover, I said, “Oh, THAT guy.”

I recognized the author as a guy who works at our company.  I see the guy a lot at work, but I’ve never talked to him.  He doesn’t talk to me either.  That made me feel like I wasn’t obligated to read his novel.  If he had been within my small circle of acquaintances at work, I would have felt obligated.

Out of curiosity, I bought the book on Amazon anyway and began reading it.  As far as science fiction goes, it’s okay.  It doesn’t do anything I haven’t seen or read about before.  I mean, that’s not what I’m going to say to anybody who asks.  I have a few complimentary comments ready which will show everybody at work that I’ve actually read the entire book.

The coworker author set the book up as a series, so there’s a cliffhanger at the end of the book, and I might give the coworker grief if he takes too long to finish the second book.  He doesn’t know me well, so if I start calling him George RR Martin for taking too long, he might not understand where I’m coming from, and that could cause friction at work, even though we don’t really have anything to do with each other.  My sense of humor doesn’t go over well with people who don’t know me.

The paperback sells for just under $15.00 and the Kindle is $3.99.  It’s kind of overpriced for its size, but I don’t think the coworker author has much control over that.  I would put it up on this blog, but I’m trying to sell my own ebooks (like this one right here!!  If you like this blog, you’ll probably like this too!).

It would hurt my feelings if somebody else’s book got more attention on my blog than my own ebooks.  Plus, the coworker author has already gotten a lot of people from work to buy his book.  To be fair, I don’t know how hard he pitched his book to everybody in his department.  He’s not a boss, so he can’t threaten anybody.  But it seems like he needs friends and coworkers to keep his sales rank up.  He has a few Amazon reviews (all 5-stars), but I recognize the names of a couple reviewers (coworkers), so I’m curious how this book will do once the friends/family/coworkers are done buying it.

I would ask the coworker some questions about his publishing experience (and how it’s going), but it would be awkward.  Again, he doesn’t know me, so there would be no reason for me to come up to him out of nowhere and pester him about his book, especially since I’m not ready to tell people (coworkers and friends) about my blog and ebooks just yet.

I’m curious how successful this author will be in the long run.  He’s going about things in a different way than I am.  I’m going the indie route and using my blog, and in a few years when my kids don’t need me watching over them/driving them around all the time, I can devote more time to writing and trying new social media strategies.  In the meantime, I hope he’s successful, and I’ll probably buy his second book.

But I hope he can drop the price a little next time.