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Popular Human posted:Just how to make it work for you, or has something changed? People are reporting that they've lost the ABs pointing to their books. Kinda curious about how widespread this issue is.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:02
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EngineerSean posted:Glitchtember has come and gone, I just published a book today and will continue to do so until January at least. moana posted:glitchtember is the annual Amazon holiday month of glitches where they These are the only posts about Glitchtember but it is a real thing and you should expect to get hosed if you publish a book in September.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:09
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RedTonic posted:People are reporting that they've lost the ABs pointing to their books. Kinda curious about how widespread this issue is. Hmm. I just checked the last few releases by a very popular author (I show up as #1 in her "people also bought books by these authors" column), and my stories/bundles are all up in the also-boughts for her poo poo. So maybe it's just a weird glitch? I'll keep my fingers crossed and my eye on the authors who write in the same genre as me.
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Sep 12, 2016 18:10
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EngineerSean posted:These are the only posts about Glitchtember but it is a real thing and you should expect to get hosed if you publish a book in September. It's also affecting the novel I published this spring, unless it's possible to lose ABs pointing at a title for other reasons. Only gained them recently because I'm an idiot but they were mine and they were helping my sales. 
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Sep 12, 2016 18:27
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RedTonic posted:It's also affecting the novel I published this spring, unless it's possible to lose ABs pointing at a title for other reasons. Only gained them recently because I'm an idiot but they were mine and they were helping my sales. It is entirely possible to lose also-boughts organically after a while, they just fall off the list. I think that's especially likely for a book well past its 30-day window.
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Sep 12, 2016 19:05
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EngineerSean posted:It is entirely possible to lose also-boughts organically after a while, they just fall off the list. I think that's especially likely for a book well past its 30-day window. I just got 'em like a week and a half ago and that book's been trending up on salesrank. 
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Sep 12, 2016 19:07
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RedTonic posted:I just got 'em like a week and a half ago and that book's been trending up on salesrank. I don't know what to tell you, sorry.
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Sep 12, 2016 19:09
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Lots and lots of people have been seeing their AB's disappear, even on top 100 books. It seems like they're gradually reappearing now, but it was probably to do with some sort of algorithm update.
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Sep 13, 2016 01:25
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angel opportunity posted:lol...that is really awkward, please keep us posted It got worse, and I'm still only about 2/3 way through. There were plenty of anti-gay slurs being thrown around by the Mary Sue protagonist, but I was giving the benefit of the doubt on characterisation. Now it's all over the narration. Trans-people too have been shoehorned in awkwardly for a bashing. The only gay dude is also a paedophile as well as being charicature camp-bitchy. The Evil Woman's new husband drives a pink jeep wrangler, always wears an apron, and loves (except when he hates) the Evil Woman going at him from behind with obscenely described ridiculous ...er... bedroom accessories. It's all implied, nothing explicit (thank god) but the Evil Woman had breast cancer and a double mastectomy (just thrown in casually) and now there's a bunch of 'jokes' about her having no tits. Oh, and a paragraph about Quantas stewardesses being old and gay if male or old and ugly if female, and the Asian airlines know to drop stewardesses as soon as they start thinking about family or marriage. The biggest crime, it seems, is men not being manly enough and women not being womanly enough. The protagonist incited a riot in Sydney but the author seems to hate both anyone more left wing touchy feely and anyone more right wing conservative than him. For instance, every couple of chapters we are reminded that Queen Bitch is an atheist conservative, but also he goes off about what conservative backwards scum Aussie farmers are, but then says Australia is 'beyond a socialist state' and devotes a few pages to how downtrodden the middle class is, bemoaning how families with 100k aussie a year are seen as rich but suffer more than most. Unions are bad, but if only the middle classes could realise that they drive the country forward and somehow come together... I thought the guy was alright when we were chatting in the pub but now I'm not so sure I want to hang out again. It's like a less eloquent, more bigoted, less restrained Jeremy Clarkson wrote this rubbish. I'll stop posting about this now. The 'book' is a steaming hot one. This thread isn't for terrible writing, it's for how to play the game of self-publishing. On that topic, all I have to say is 'your writing probably isn't as bad as you think it is if stuff like this exists and the author is proud of it' and 'do not ever, EVER, let a total randomer send you a copy of their book asking for feedback. Ever.'
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Sep 13, 2016 02:41
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simplefish posted:It got worse, and I'm still only about 2/3 way through. There were plenty of anti-gay slurs being thrown around by the Mary Sue protagonist, but I was giving the benefit of the doubt on characterisation. Now it's all over the narration. Trans-people too have been shoehorned in awkwardly for a bashing. The only gay dude is also a paedophile as well as being charicature camp-bitchy. The Evil Woman's new husband drives a pink jeep wrangler, always wears an apron, and loves (except when he hates) the Evil Woman going at him from behind with obscenely described ridiculous ...er... bedroom accessories. It's all implied, nothing explicit (thank god) but the Evil Woman had breast cancer and a double mastectomy (just thrown in casually) and now there's a bunch of 'jokes' about her having no tits. Oh, and a paragraph about Quantas stewardesses being old and gay if male or old and ugly if female, and the Asian airlines know to drop stewardesses as soon as they start thinking about family or marriage. The biggest crime, it seems, is men not being manly enough and women not being womanly enough. The protagonist incited a riot in Sydney but the author seems to hate both anyone more left wing touchy feely and anyone more right wing conservative than him. For instance, every couple of chapters we are reminded that Queen Bitch is an atheist conservative, but also he goes off about what conservative backwards scum Aussie farmers are, but then says Australia is 'beyond a socialist state' and devotes a few pages to how downtrodden the middle class is, bemoaning how families with 100k aussie a year are seen as rich but suffer more than most. Unions are bad, but if only the middle classes could realise that they drive the country forward and somehow come together... Honestly, I'd just jump straight to the inevitable restraining order.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:09
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Sad lions posted:Honestly, I'd just jump straight to the inevitable restraining order. rofl yeah this is probably the correct answer never help anyone if you're not sure they're mentally stable
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Sep 13, 2016 21:31
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EngineerSean posted:rofl yeah this is probably the correct answer maybe not even then because the human race on the whole cannot be trusted Tangent: Can I troll for votes in this thread for that weekly award I mentioned, by any chance? I'm really really close to winning. I don't care about  or whatever but a few extra would be incredible. I get free advertising for a month if I win!If it's not kosher or nobody wants to without reading first (which is perfectly understandable), I'll, I dunno, edit this out or something so no one probates/laughs at me. 
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Sep 14, 2016 14:24
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Uh... my expected royalties just went down $10. Is this part of Glitchtember or did the Angry Amazon Gods decide some of my sales were somehow not legit? 
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Sep 14, 2016 14:44
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Chokes McGee posted:maybe not even then because the human race on the whole cannot be trusted I already liked the post and it automatically voted for you, but you should directly link the post that needs to be liked if you want people to actually do it. Chokes McGee posted:Uh... my expected royalties just went down $10. Is this part of Glitchtember or did the Angry Amazon Gods decide some of my sales were somehow not legit? There's a number of reasons why this happens and it doesn't sound like a result of a glitch. What methods are you using to check your royalties?
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Sep 14, 2016 16:15
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Best ever promotional approach: Going door to door asking your neighbors to buy your self-help pamphlet and leave you a 5-star review.  My mother's (lovely) next door neighbor did this last month. Approach fails even worse than you'd expect when all your neighbors hate you, by the way.
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Sep 14, 2016 16:28
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Sundae posted:Best ever promotional approach: Going door to door asking your neighbors to buy your self-help pamphlet and leave you a 5-star review. I see this advice pop up kinda frequently and it never fails to make me cringe. The people who tell writers to do this poo poo are the same people who give lovely resume advice to job-seekers. Every time I see it, I have to talk myself down from careposting.
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Sep 14, 2016 16:37
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EngineerSean posted:I already liked the post and it automatically voted for you, but you should directly link the post that needs to be liked if you want people to actually do it. Well, I didn't want to haul off and just go HAY GUYS VOTE FOR MY BOOK WELL CYA. But if it's alright: Hit dat vote button Any votes this week automatically go towards my award total. Thanks, everybody. 
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Sep 14, 2016 16:46
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EngineerSean posted:I already liked the post and it automatically voted for you, but you should directly link the post that needs to be liked if you want people to actually do it. The Reports list on KDP. It suddenly went from $65 USD to $50 and I'm not really sure what happened there. 
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Sep 14, 2016 16:47
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Chokes McGee posted:The Reports list on KDP. It suddenly went from $65 USD to $50 and I'm not really sure what happened there. This is really the last time I'm gonna ask for more specificity before admitting I'm not tech support but you just mean that default graph that pops up when you click reports? The default is for it to measure the last thirty days, did ten dollars of sales fall off due to age? Do you have a lot of returns in your monthly sales reports?
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Sep 14, 2016 17:17
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EngineerSean posted:This is really the last time I'm gonna ask for more specificity before admitting I'm not tech support but you just mean that default graph that pops up when you click reports? The default is for it to measure the last thirty days, did ten dollars of sales fall off due to age? Doh! This is the reason. The figures are for the graph, not overall 90 day period. Thanks!
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Sep 14, 2016 17:22
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RedTonic posted:I see this advice pop up kinda frequently and it never fails to make me cringe. The people who tell writers to do this poo poo are the same people who give lovely resume advice to job-seekers. Every time I see it, I have to talk myself down from careposting. It's awful advice. It's amazing to me that someone would even consider it, let alone do it while they're the #1 most-hated resident in the neighborhood.
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Sep 14, 2016 18:40
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These are the same people who see Tupperware/partylite/pyramid scheme sales as a viable way to make money at home. Why try and sell a product in a store when you can guilt your friends and neighbors into buying it? Also whatever algorithm change Amazon made is working quite well for me. Though I'm sure that'll change with the next algo...
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Sep 14, 2016 19:10
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So is anyone else having this issue where KDP randomly says your book has zero spelling issues, even though you know there's a couple words in your backmatter that always comes up as typos? Normally all my stories say "you have 3 possible spelling errors," all in backmatter, but my latest says zero. I had this happen to me last week; I published the story and Amazon blocked it. Then they blocked it AGAIN after I republished it, changing the cover and blurb to the most tame stuff imaginable. I'm concerned because my latest story (in what's becoming my most profitable series) is doing the same thing. It could just be glitchtember, but I'm starting to worry I'm doing something with my formatting that Amazon is interpreting as me trying to cheat (I'm literally just dumping it into LibreOffice from my Alphasmart, revising it, adding chapters/TOC and the backmatter) and so they're blocking the book. I guess I'll see for sure if they block this story for no reason.
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Sep 14, 2016 22:13
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Popular Human posted:So is anyone else having this issue where KDP randomly says your book has zero spelling issues, even though you know there's a couple words in your backmatter that always comes up as typos? Normally all my stories say "you have 3 possible spelling errors," all in backmatter, but my latest says zero. I had this happen to me last week; I published the story and Amazon blocked it. Then they blocked it AGAIN after I republished it, changing the cover and blurb to the most tame stuff imaginable. KDP doesn't do a good job of detecting spelling errors, period. I'm not sure what dictionary they're using for it, but I've definitely caught a couple honest to goodness spelling errors in my books after they've gone live that weren't caught by the KDP checker, and the KDP checker will often identify words which are real English words, too. Edited to add: and not the kinds of English words often misused! Basically... gently caress the KDP automated spellchecker.
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Sep 14, 2016 22:21
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RedTonic posted:KDP doesn't do a good job of detecting spelling errors, period. I'm not sure what dictionary they're using for it, but I've definitely caught a couple honest to goodness spelling errors in my books after they've gone live that weren't caught by the KDP checker, and the KDP checker will often identify words which are real English words, too. Edited to add: and not the kinds of English words often misused! The weird thing is how inconsistent it is. It's literally the same backmatter. Just as a test, I added a couple egregious typos to my story, and it STILL says "0 spelling errors" when done. So sometimes I publish it, and it has trouble, and sometimes it doesn't. If it blocks this story, I'll know I'm doing something wrong, and probably switch to Google Docs or something.
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Sep 14, 2016 22:27
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I noticed that if you ever once press "ignore errors" on a particular book, it won't display them again ever. So say you accidentally press it, or press it cause you're planning to upload again later...I think it won't find them again. I had this happen to me once.
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Sep 14, 2016 22:29
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EngineerSean posted:These are the only posts about Glitchtember but it is a real thing and you should expect to get hosed if you publish a book in September. Confirmed.
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Sep 15, 2016 03:01
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RedTonic posted:KDP doesn't do a good job of detecting spelling errors, period. Several large passages of my last book were written in northern-dialect Elizabethan English. KDP flagged almost every single word. It was infuriating. Then, just to compound the aggro, it mushed a load of words together when it went to publish, so I had to sort that out with an instant 2nd edition anyway. RedTonic posted:Basically... gently caress the KDP automated spellchecker.
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Sep 15, 2016 14:16
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Flopstick posted:Several large passages of my last book were written in northern-dialect Elizabethan English. KDP flagged almost every single word. It was infuriating. Then, just to compound the aggro, it mushed a load of words together when it went to publish, so I had to sort that out with an instant 2nd edition anyway. I got super duper lucky with KDP and it only flagged three words, only one of which was a miss (and I still have no idea how it happened unless LibreOffice was lying to me). It still pesters me whenever I update the book but w/e, I click ignore twice and get on with life. Is it just me, or are Amazon products are getting kind of rickety? They're going the way of Microsoft, and I don't much care for it =/
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Sep 15, 2016 14:27
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Chokes McGee posted:I got super duper lucky with KDP and it only flagged three words, only one of which was a miss (and I still have no idea how it happened unless LibreOffice was lying to me). It still pesters me whenever I update the book but w/e, I click ignore twice and get on with life. I wish they'd go the way of Microsoft. Their products have never been better. Office 360 is loving amazing for an author. Seriously people. Get that poo poo and use OneDrive forever.
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Sep 15, 2016 16:02
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walruscat posted:I wish they'd go the way of Microsoft. Their products have never been better. Office 360 is loving amazing for an author. Seriously people. Get that poo poo and use OneDrive forever. Seriously lol'in at anyone who thinks they need a $100/year program to type words onto the Internet. The only reason I bought Vellum is the deal with the devil they made to get more KENPC than any other program.
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Sep 15, 2016 17:02
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Well, book posted fine so I guess I was just being paranoid.
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Sep 15, 2016 17:18
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EngineerSean posted:Seriously lol'in at anyone who thinks they need a $100/year program to type words onto the Internet. The only reason I bought Vellum is the deal with the devil they made to get more KENPC than any other program. I'm using FocusWriter and setting a 1.5k daily goal. I'll have to load into LO and restyle when I get a complete first draft though.
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Sep 15, 2016 17:44
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Chokes McGee posted:I'm using FocusWriter and setting a 1.5k daily goal. I'll have to load into LO and restyle when I get a complete first draft though. It looks great imo. My only VR device is for my phone right now but when the 2nd gen ones come out I'm going to get something like this with the Desktop viewer you can get through Steam.
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Sep 15, 2016 17:46
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EngineerSean posted:Seriously lol'in at anyone who thinks they need a $100/year program to type words onto the Internet. The only reason I bought Vellum is the deal with the devil they made to get more KENPC than any other program. Hey I need to amend this post. If you're doing great and want a program that types words better than Notepad, I guess there's worse things you could spend $100/year on. If you're like most self publishers and you either a) already have a program you like (Wordpad, OpenOffice, LibreOffice are all fine examples, in addition to Scrivner which is paid but costs less) or b) don't have $100/year in spare change to get something another program does, don't spend $100/year on Microsoft's terrible product line.
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Sep 16, 2016 06:59
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EngineerSean posted:Hey I need to amend this post. If you're doing great and want a program that types words better than Notepad, I guess there's worse things you could spend $100/year on. If you're like most self publishers and you either a) already have a program you like (Wordpad, OpenOffice, LibreOffice are all fine examples, in addition to Scrivner which is paid but costs less) or b) don't have $100/year in spare change to get something another program does, don't spend $100/year on Microsoft's terrible product line. Not only that but if you have Windows you can just, y'know, point your existing software at OneDrive.
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Sep 16, 2016 16:08
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walruscat posted:I wish they'd go the way of Microsoft. Their products have never been better. Office 360 is loving amazing for an author. Seriously people. Get that poo poo and use OneDrive forever. I hate to disagree, but Word is driving me up the wall. On one phone and on my Surface it keeps insisting I need to renew my license, when I have a direct debit set up to auto-renew it every month, and on Android it's quite simply a car crash. It seems to be okay for small files, or when it's on Wifi, but my WiP is nearly 80,000 words now (still only 400kb mind) and trying to type anything when I'm offline just results in random characters and word fragments being inserted all over the place. Even worse, using backspace just deletes whole chunks at random. It's basically unusable for working on the move at this point.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:16
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Just use whatever works for you and gets you to put words onto the internet for people to read. I use Office 2007, but I also got it for $25 or something through the old Student Deal program. I'd be in wordpad or some silly poo poo otherwise. It doesn't matter.
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Sep 16, 2016 18:26
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Flopstick posted:I hate to disagree, but Word is driving me up the wall. On one phone and on my Surface it keeps insisting I need to renew my license, when I have a direct debit set up to auto-renew it every month, and on Android it's quite simply a car crash. It seems to be okay for small files, or when it's on Wifi, but my WiP is nearly 80,000 words now (still only 400kb mind) and trying to type anything when I'm offline just results in random characters and word fragments being inserted all over the place. Even worse, using backspace just deletes whole chunks at random. It's basically unusable for working on the move at this point. That sucks! Sorry to hear. I have it on PC and my iphone and ipad and haven't had any issues. But yeah, obviously do whatever works for you at your price point, as long as you back that poo poo up automatically somehow.
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Sep 17, 2016 03:29
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walruscat posted:I wish they'd go the way of Microsoft. Their products have never been better. Office 360 is loving amazing for an author. Seriously people. Get that poo poo and use OneDrive forever. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/books-novelist-runs-fiery-home-laptop-42123730
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Sep 17, 2016 05:10
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