It's Tough to Get a Self-Published Book Reviewed - Part I

I was just reading a reviewer’s blog that describes why they don’t accept self-published (SP) books to review.  Their main reasons were SP authors can have bad manners and argue over reviews, SP books usually have substandard covers and too many plot holes and grammatical mistakes.  These reasons for the policy excluding SP books made me laugh.  Well, maybe not LOL laugh, but it made me smirk a little.

I’m sure that there are SP authors that can’t take a bad – or even less than perfect – review without firing off a heated email. Obviously, that’s extremely bad form.  It’s better to find out where they live and stalk them. Just kidding.  Really.  But I know of traditionally published (TP) authors that have done the same.  Recently, an author of a well-received, TP, first-in-a-series book, ridiculed many reviewers of the second when certain plotting details were criticized.  And this author’s disparaging remarks were in public forums and blogs.

I’ve seen a lot of fantastic TP covers, and many mediocre TP covers as well. You know what I mean, all those covers with the author’s name and the title in ginormous print, surrounding some okay photo or illustration must have taken at least five minutes with photoshop to design.  And while a fantastic cover can help sell a book, it shouldn’t necessarily mean that a less than fantastic one should relegate your tome to non-reviewable.  The reviewer can certainly comment about the cover art as part of the review, but to not review it at all based on their interpretation of the cover art seems a bit harsh.  My first book, Special Offers, had a perfectly hideous cover when I first released it.  Someone even nominated it for Goodread's worst cover.  It still got reviews -- good ones -- even with the grimace-inducing image (but I did change the cover art, eventually).

Which brings me to the final reason why these reviewers won’t review SP work: SP authors can’t write worth shit.  Now, I have read a lot of traditionally published books as well as many self-published ones.  And, for the most part, a fair percentage of the SP stuff is a bit iffy when it comes to plotting, grammar and spelling.  But just yesterday, I was reading a new book from a very popular paranormal romance author where she wrote about one character saving another’s life by establishing an unobstructed airway – in his ESOPHAGUS.  Really?  There’s a reason the procedure is called a tracheotomy.  Because one’s lungs are attached to one’s TRACHEA.  The esophagus is what one’s food slips down en route to the stomach.  And the author correctly calls it a tracheotomy later in the book.  And how did this get passed all of the TP editors, beta-readers and ARC reviewers?  Plus, I already counted three typos, and I’m only 75% through. 

So my point is this.  Rather than an outright refusal to review the dreaded SP book, why not read the first chapter.  If it sucks, then don’t read any more and forget about it.  Or post that you read the first chapter and you wanted to shove a sharp pair of scissors in your eyes rather than have to keep reading.  And it’s not just because I am a SP author.  I think it’s a little snobbish to restrict oneself (and one’s blog readers) to the creations that are brought forth by TP companies, as if they have all the answers and do everything so much better than anyone else. Sure they do.  That’s why Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino landed a book deal with a TP house.

A Paid Promotion That Was Worth the Cost

As a self-published author, I'm always looking for ways to market my work.  There are a lot of options and I've tried many: blog hops, giveaways, ads.  You name it, I've given it a go. The success of such promotions can be measured in a number of ways, but if you want to increase sales most don't give much bang for the buck.

Given my prior experience, I was reluctant to shell out more money on the Lendle Today's Featured Book Promotion.  For $35, they promote your Kindle book on their website, Twitter and Facebook and in emails to subscribers for the entire day you book the deal.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and check it out.  In that 24 period, I sold five times as many books that I had the rest of the month.  Now, I don't sell huge amounts, but five times more was a big deal, and I definitely made back the invested money.  

The scientist in me wanted to try to determine if this was a fluke.  So, a few weeks later, I promoted the same book again.  I figured sales might be less than from the first promotion, reasoning that the people who had previously purchased the book obviously wouldn't be buying again and a similar cohort of folks would be seeing the promo.  Surprisingly, the number of books sold was slightly higher the second time around.

From my experiences, I recommend the service.  I'd be interested to hear from others that have bought the other promotions - which are more expensive but are genre-specific and last a week - for their impressions.

Tidbits on Marketing for the Self-Published

Not that I am, by any means, an expert on the subject, but I thought I’d offer some personal marketing experiences for the self-published:

Any promotion where your book(s) are part of a giveaway isn’t worth your time or effort.  I’ve participated in about 10 blog hops, book tours, contests etc. in which people could enter to win a free copy of my book.  As far as I can tell, I’ve never made a sale as a result of one of these.  Sure, people are all gung-ho for a freebie, but if they don’t win, they don’t buy.  It makes sense.  If someone doesn't win, they probably forgot they entered.  Even if they thought the book sounded fabulous, they likely don’t even remember it by the time the giveaway is over.  If you are doing a giveaway because you just want to get your work out there, then these promotions are fine.  If you think your sales might improve, don’t hold your breath.

 Some paid advertisements are better than others.  This one’s a no-brainer, but the trick is to figure out which sites are worth what you pay.  In my experience, there aren’t many paid sites that get you more in sales than you shelled out for the ad itself.  If it’s more than $25, think long and hard about it, unless you know books in your genre do well on that site.  And the only way to find that out is to ask authors in your genre where they advertised with good results.  And make sure the author you ask is someone who will give you the real scoop – it doesn’t help if they exaggerate their sales just to make it seem like they’ve sold more books than they actually did.

 If your book is going to be free on Amazon, make sure you promote it!  Just because your book is free on Amazon doesn’t mean people will know it’s free.  I used the Author Marketing Club’s Free Kindle Book Submission Tool .  It lets you sign up for a bunch of promotions, most of which are free or a nominal fee, on the days your book is free.  Make sure you sign up as soon as you know when your free dates are; many sites require advanced warning so don’t wait until the night before.  I ended up with over 4,000 downloads of Special Offers in the 2 days I offered it for free and was #2 in free sales in my genre for about 10 hours during that time span!

Don’t pay a crap-load of money for a contest.  You know what I’m talking about, pay hundreds of dollars to enter your work in a contest for Independent/Self-Published authors so you can say you’ve won the coveted Obscure Literary Guild’s Gold Medal.  I have no specific evidence, but I’m pretty sure these are scams.  Use a fraction of the money and slap your own “medal” on your book’s cover or webpage if you feel you need validation to make more sales.   There are only a couple of literary awards that, when associated with your work, are going to make people stand up and take notice and I’d bet the Pulitzer people don’t ask for a fee.  Even if they do, if your book wins one of those bad boys, your sales are going to go up so it’s worth the cost.

Sequestration and Self-Publishing

Today is the day — barring some miraculous, last minute complete personality shifts by everyone in the White House and Congress — mandatory, across-the-board budget cuts will begin for pretty much everything that the federal government funds. 

I’m fairly certain the “sequester”, as it is called, will occur because our elected officials have been so busy posturing and trying to look tough, their chests are too puffed out to see the cluster fuck right in front of them that will affect us all.  Well, except them.  I’m betting that the folks in Washington D.C. that came up with this idiocy and then did nothing to prevent it aren’t going to feel the pinch.  Federal employees will be forced to take furlough — as much a day a week — which means their pay will be cut accordingly.  That will affect millions of workers.  Of course, a 20% pay cut is way better than losing your job completely.  But their decrease in take-home pay will affect businesses because they won’t spend as much.  Which will mean layoffs in all sorts of places.  This doesn’t take into account all the federally-funded programs that will suddenly have less money.  Some of these are, undoubtedly, bloated and should be cut.  But what about those that are just making do with what they have now?

So what does this have to do with independent authors?  For indies, the sequestration is both good and bad.  Those of us that very likely will end up unemployed as a result of this madness will have all kinds of time to write.  Of course, no one will have any discretionary money to buy books; they will have to prioritize and spend on stuff like, you know, food.  So eventually there will be a glut of books (good) but no one to buy them (bad).  Or, another way to look at it is there will be more people with a lot of free time  — when they aren’t looking for work or standing in the unemployment line — to read (good).  Unless there are no unemployment benefits because that has been cut (bad).  The only entity I see benefiting is the Kindle Select Program.  Everyone will want free books, right?

How to Help an Author

The best way, of course, is to buy their books.

The second best way is to review their books.

Goodreads is one of the easiest places to leave a review.  You don't even have to write anything, you can just rate the book.

On Amazon, you have to leave a short review along with your "star" rating, but it only has to be 20 words  (which is two less than the last sentence).  You can leave something like:

★★★★★ I really loved this book.  I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end.  Can't wait for the next.

Or, perhaps:

★★★★A great book.  Not once while I was reading it did I feel as though I was going to hurl.

The point is, a few moments of your time after you've read something you liked can be a huge boon to the author, particularly one who has chosen to self-publish.  They put lots of time into their work so you would have something to enjoy.  Please take a few moments to give a little something extra back.

Think of it as an incredibly inexpensive holiday gift for an author.  We are so easy to buy for....

Black Friday Blog Hop!

I’ve never been a big fan of shopping.  I don’t particularly like crowds and I despise waking up when it’s dark out.  All of which make the whole Black Friday thing my equivalent to having a root canal procedure without any Novocain.  There’s no way in hell I’d ever wait in line in the middle of the night so at the appointed hour I and my line-mates can all behave like barbarians as we trample our fellow man (woman or child) to snag some deal.  How is that fun?  And now, Black Friday begins at some retailers on Thursday.  You are supposed to be pretending to have a wonderful time with relatives you can't stand on Thanksgiving, not skipping out early to check out Target. Why don’t we just have jousting matches outside Best Buy to figure out who will be able to purchase a 36” flat-screen TV made by some unknown company (that can’t be programmed on any Universal remote) for half price?

It’s all a big scam by retailers to get people into the stores anyway. They only have a limited number of the “big deals” at each store so, more than likely - unless you are willing to camp out in line for a few days - you’re not going to bag the bargain anyway.  But you’re there, and you’ve fritted away hours waiting for the doors to open.  You have to justify your time expenditure somehow, and what better way (in the eyes of the retailer, of course), than to buy some other stuff that you could have just as easily waited to purchase when you didn’t have to get up at the butt-crack of whenever. 

I know, I know.  It’s a byproduct of our hunter-and-gatherer roots.  You can’t come back empty handed.   You’ll appear weak.  Your husband will frown and say, “What, you waited for five hours in the cold and you came back without the X-Box Mega 8000 that’s only slightly different than the Mega 7000 that you bought last year?” 

No one wants to have to answer that. 

Instead, you find anything to make your loved ones believe you braved the Black Friday hoards and came back with the modern equivalent of a mastodon to nourish your family through the long winter to come.  Even if that means bringing home a life-sized Justin Beiber Chia Pet.

At least everyone can munch on the sprouts…

~~~~****~~~~

Instead of waiting in line to shop on this, the first official shopping day of the 2012 Holiday shopping season, why not check out my books Special Offers and Special Rewards.

I'm giving away a FREE copy of Special Rewards!

Don't forget to leave your email in your comments so you will be eligible for the prizes!

(The comment section is after the list of bloggers)

And the winner is:  CatFire!
Thanks to all who participated.

Six Sentence Sunday November 4

SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY

This is my first Six Sentence Sunday, where authors blog six sentences from one of their masterpieces.  Thanks to Thianna D. for giving me a heads up on this creative opportunity!

Today’s six comes from Special Offers, the first book in the Coursodon Dimension Series.  It’s about Hailey, a 30 year-old, chinchilla-milking book fanatic who bites the bullet and buys a Kindle when her ever-expanding collection of paperbacks threatens to take over her living space.  Unbeknownst to her, it comes pre-loaded with a magically-inclined guy from a parallel dimension and Sebastian’s spiritual essence takes up residence inside of Hailey the first time she turns on the eBook reader.  Believe me, it’s not easy sharing your body with an arrogant, opinionated womanizer, particularly when you still have some unresolved trust issues courtesy of your cheating ex-husband.

~~~~~

After negotiating a payment plan with the restaurant owner - which involved allowing him to indulge his foot fetish with my pinkie toes and some flavored whipped cream - I left the place and got into my car, which was really weird, because my date drove.  There in the parking lot were dine-and-dash and the hostess, groping each other with utter abandon.  I revved up the engine, threw the car into drive and peeled out towards them.  The headlights illuminated their stunned faces as I spun the car sharply, rolled down the window and chucked a lit Molotov cocktail made from the empty wine bottle from dinner at them and sped off humming the theme to “The Lion King.”

I woke up thinking I must be making progress.  Usually in my dreams I ran them over after I set them on fire.

~~~~~

Hope you enjoyed the six sentences.  As long as you’re here, check out the rest of the blog.  Happy Sunday!

Facebook Ad Experiment: A Success?

I have been running continuous FB ads for a while.  For the most part, my sales have been slow but steady, and I attributed any upswings to when reviews were posted.  I've been extraordinarily swamped at my day job for the last two weeks, and I let the FB ad expire.  Of course, I was too busy to realize this.  I was aware, however, that even though 2 very favorable reviews were posted in this time frame, there were no sales in the last two weeks.  None.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Yesterday, I finally noticed that the ad wasn't running, so I created a new one.  In less than 24 hours, I sold five books.  

I will cautiously conclude that the FB ads can be very helpful when it comes to upping sales.  It's not helpful for making money, as I've paid out more for the ads than what's come in for sales.  That said, I'm not all that concerned about the money at this point.  I'm more interested in getting more people to read the book.

Here's what I've learned about FB ads: 

1. Cast a large net.  You want your "reach" to be big, but not too big.  My first ad targeted women who like paranormal romance in the US,UK and Canada.  It wasn't that successful.  I've expanded the targeted audience to include both men and women who like paranormal romance OR the Black Dagger Brotherhood books, and added Australia, NZ, India, France, Spain and Germany.  (Yesterday, I sold my very first book in España!) 

2. Make the ad pop.  The visual that people see is a small thing on the side of their FB page.  A little image and a few words of text.  The one that's worked best for me so far is a spooky looking guy, coupled with the header "Like Paranormal Romance?" and short bit about the book that I think would intrigue people.  At least enough to click on the ad and get more information.  Apparently, creepy faces get more clicks than other visuals (including the cover art, which isn't particularly creepy).  Next time, I might try the ubiquitous shirtless hunk and see how that goes.

3. Change it up if it's not working.  If you create an ad and it doesn't seem to be doing what you hoped, you can alter it or halt it and create a whole new one.  A lot of this, unfortunately, is trial and error (and error, and error).

Is it worth the cost?  Hard to say, but I suspect it is.  A cheap paid ad on a well-viewed appropriate web site can cost a fair chunk of change, and they are usually only for a couple of days.  The ad is targeted to people likely to buy the book, but your reach can be way bigger using FB.  The bottom line is, I don't think an indie author can rely solely on free marketing strategies.  Blogs and word-of-mouth are great, but to reach the most folks, I think you have to be willing to shell out some cash.  You don't have to spend thousands, but if you want the best bang-for-your-buck, you have to be willing to spend at least some bucks or you're unlikely to get banged.