Products related to this title...

 Amazon likes to send me emails. They reckon they've got the measure of me, though buying gifts for my nine year old niece often throws them. Today they've sent me a message telling me they've found "something I might like." It's my novel Fine. 

They're quite right. I do like my novel Fine. I think its pretty damn good: sad, funny, witty and morose, it does it all. But I have a copy, Amazon. A couple, actually. 

I took the opportunity to look at the page for my book on Amazon, and discovered Amazon has a little "products related to this title" section. Well, I wonder what those products are? Kleenex and Tena pants? Very useful with my rib-tickling monkeyshines. 

 No, they are books. 

And what books. 

These are the books Amazon thinks are linked to my novel: 

"Conversation Casanova: How to effortlessly start conversations and flirt like a pro."

"Jack Wakes Up (Jack Palms Crime Book 1)"

"The Devil's Countdown: A Prophetic Christian Supernatural Thriller". 

"Dark Wine at Midnight: Volume 1 (A Hill Vampire Novel)"

"Relativity for Beginners: The Special and General Theory."

"The Lifestyle Blueprint: How to talk to women, build your social circle and grow your wealth."

That's a "how to pick up girls" book, a noirish crime novel, a Christian apocalypse, a vampire novel, a physics primer, and another "how to pick up girls" book. 

Now. 

Fine is not like that at all. These books might be very funny. But not on purpose. I can sort of see how Bezos' nanobots came up with the "conversational tips for broken men" angle - though it's a very strange reading. It's almost as if the books are being recommended to Paul, the protagonist in the book, rather than his readers. The vampire one too, makes a sort of sense. In the book Paul is writing/not writing a book about a vampire hypnotist. It's probably mentioned somewhere. But the special theory of relativity? A crime novel set in the forties? A Christian dystopia? What the fuck, Jeff? 

The singularity might be some way off yet. 

No one is going to get to my book by any of these tenuous routes. There's no crossover. These are credulous books for idiots and social inadequates (and Christians). My audience are good looking and highly sexed, with narrow waists and lustrous hair. They have the confidence to go into a bookshop and order a copy, perhaps two copies - it's an ideal gift - of the finest comic novel published since Jack Handey's The Stench of Honolulu. It's innate, that special charisma is just born in them. They don't need to learn how to talk to girls or understand gravity, they already do all that stuff. Most of them are women. Cool ones. Scientists. 

And they don't take their literary cues from self-serving algorithms. Though they probably should leave a review on Amazon if they can. It'd be doing me a favour. Cheers, my cool, cool audience.