According to Bill Gates, or someone, the average human mind can concentrate on a maximum of eight things at one time. In this world of technology we often have eight or more windows open on our computer and many more in our minds. Throw in the day job, a tribe of kids wanting taxi service, pets chewing things they shouldn't and a leaking tap in the kitchen. Add the never-ending stream of spam and scam emails, facebook ads (no, fb, I'm not looking for twenty-something gorgeous single women in my area - or, I should say, they're not looking for me), robo phone surveys and door to door callers. Yes I have broadband. Yes I would like uncongested broadband. No I don't believe you when you say you have cheaper uncongested broadband. No I don't want a genuine oil painting. Hey, let go of my puppy. Okay I'll buy it, just put the dog down on the ground unharmed and I'll sign. Slams door.

We're living on the edge. Just one more thing, one tiny thing and it's going to get ugly. Hey look, Amazon are selling e-books in India. Hey, now they're selling e-books in Japan. Shame that the whole sales volume seems to have slowed down, just at the time these two new markets are added to Kindle Direct Publishing. But wait a minute. Did really no one buy any e-books for several days? How come that long term free book isn't showing up any figures in the sales reports yet its ranking is steady in the charts? Check chat forums - established indie authors with monthly sales volumes in the hundreds or thousands seem to be experiencing a uniform sudden decline. Maybe India was too much for the KDP reports to digest. Perhaps Japan overloaded the system. The UK Amazon tax boycott? It's the US election. No, that's over, Thanksgiving then. Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Kindle software tiny text updates? Check and reformat my kindle books. Adjust prices up, down and sideways. No difference. Christmas approaching, the kids want new tablets, too much choice, too little money. Everything goes dark. My cerebral fuse has blown. When the lights come back on there's blood everywhere, some sort of salesman's electronic clipboard on the floor and a freshly dug mound of earth in the garden.
 
So, deep breath, ignore the carnage and go check on the Smashwords dashboard. No sales. Wait a minute. It's nearly December and the Smashwords sales figures don't even cover October for some channels, let alone November. Good job I put The Crucible epub direct on Kobo Writing Life to get instantaneous sales reporting. Over to Kobo where The Crucible remains in 'publishing' status even though I hit the publish button while on Colin Bateman's Bestseller course at the end of October. But I was drunk, so maybe they sort of knew that and there's a drunken author queue. Fair enough.

Back to Smashwords and The Crucible still hasn't been granted Premium Catalog status after three weeks 'pending review' there. But wait a minute, there isn't a submitted date on that dashboard. Seems I didn't actually submit The Crucible for premium catalog. I blame the drink. I blame me. Clearly, it's all my fault. If you've had any hiccups in your sales reporting that's probably my fault as well.

There. I feel much better after my rantidote. Try one.

No puppies were actually harmed during the making of this rantidote.