Excerpt of the Week might have to replaced by moan of the week at the rate things are going!
First of all, I have badly pulled a muscle at the base of my back so that’s one reason for the title Back to the Future this week! The other is that I simply feel I am going backwards at the moment. I simply cannot get my blog accessible in mobile devices whereas it did work before I pointed my domain lazloferran.com at it. But more of that later!

Problems with Barns & Noble
As promised here is the story of my problems with Barns & Noble on their website BN.com. Theirs is the most useless Customer Service system I have yet come across. I participated for the last 5 years in the Premium programme for my books sold through Smashwords.com. This meant that other affiliates like Sony, BN.com could sell the books for their own devices (Sony Reader and Nook). Now I want to try the Amazon KDP programme, as you know, and this requires me not to have my ebooks (entered in the programme) for sale anywhere else than Amazon. Consequently, I removed most of them from the Smashwords programme and they should have been removed from all the affiliates’ websites. However Too Bright the Sun was still available on bn.com two weeks later.
I made use of their online chat to talk to their Customer Services team about removing their book but they told me they couldn’t help and that I had to contact a different division on this email: publisherauthorinquiry@bn.com. So I did. A week later nothing had happened. I hadn’t even received a reply other than an automated reply saying that they had received my email. So I went back onto the bn.com website and chatted again. The operator told me that he was sorry I had received no reply but that there was nothing he could do for me and he suggested I telephone the department instead. I mentioned that bn.com has been making money from my book for the last 2-3 years and I considered myself a customer: I didn’t see why I should spend money on a phone call when I am currently not working full-time. Anyway, I could get no further. He said to email them again. He assured me I would definitely get a response and he would record my case notes so they would have something to refer to. So I emailed them again and waited for a response. I waited another week!
By now I was approaching the FREE promotion slots for the second book in the Iron Series so I really needed to get Too Bright the Sun into the KDP programme fast! I was becoming very frustrated with Barns & Noble. Finally this week – after nearly a month, they removed the title. But I don’t see why they couldn’t respond to ANY of my emails. Come on Barns & Noble. It’s not good enough!

Problems accessing the Blog on Mobiles – Zoneedit DNS Management
I hope this is the last time I have to whinge for a while. I am very unhappy with the services I have been getting from Zoneedit. I used to get their services for free to manage my domain lazloferran.com. Now I have to pay for it but I was happy to do so – until now.
Basically, I made a cock-up creating a domain record using their wizard for http://www.lazloferran.com instead of lazloferran.com. I don’t know why I did this: I have been creating records for over ten years and never made this mistake before. Anyway, I told zoneedit to remove the record which they did but not all of it. There is still some rogue data and it hasn’t been removed. It’s interfering with the new record and stopping it working properly. This means that the redirect on blogger.com doesn’t work properly. I don’t know why it affects only mobiles but it does. But the point is that zoneedit have not responded to two subsequent emails asking for updates and two new tickets asking for the work to be completed. As a result, I am forced to consider moving either to WordPress for my blog or changing my domain and certainly changing my domain name management company. It’s all very frustrating and stressing me out! This is the worst possible time for this to happen with me just starting to promote my books’ FREE sale period on Amazon.

Other News
I’m still working on Iron III and it’s getting near to completion. I hear that The Journals Of Raymond Brooks is also near to a completed Second Edtion so that is something to look forward to.

Isn’t it funny how illness suddenly makes the TV your best friend? Last night when my back went, I could only lie on the bed. I barely managed to get the remote control before I lay down. I watched movies on TCM and found that I was happy to watch anything that came on. Even that weird old movie with Spencer Tracy as an aged rock climber with Robert Wagner as his (very young!) brother was pretty entertaining.

Don’t forget the 3 books that are going to be FREE on Amazon in less than a week now. Here are the dates again:

24-28 June: Iron I: Too Bright the Sun
29 June-3 July: Unknown Place, Unknown Universe
2 July-6 July: Vampire: Beneficence

Please tell your friends, your neighbour, your parents, your neighbour’s dog – and the cat and hamster if they have one, and retweet or post on facebook and anywhere else you can think of if you like my work. Thanks!

• Lazlo Ferran - Author