"Roundheads and Ramblings"
Amazon
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Gwen Perkins, Guest Blog: Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2012 10:43 AM
As anyone who is or knows an author knows, many of us frequently go
around wishing and hoping that our book will receive reviews on that
book giant, Amazon. (I also wish and hope for Powell’s and Barnes and
Noble’s but as more and more authors publish exclusively through the Big
A, that’s what this blog post is about.) I thought that I’d explain my
own reasons for wanting reviews and how they work. I’m choosing to
address this via questions that I’ve received from friends and family.
1) I’m no good at writing an Amazon review. What do I say? The beautiful thing about Amazon reviews is that you don’t have to be
Roger Ebert. You can click a star rating and then write a couple of
sentences about the book. Reviews can be as simple as “This book was
really good. I wish there was more romance” or really elaborate. Here are some things you could put in a review: - Adjectives that describe the book (it was good, it was awful, etc).
- Say something you liked about it. Things that you could focus on
could include the plot, a particular scene, characters, how things
changed during the course of the story, etc.
- If there was a moment or character that personally impacted you in
some way, don’t be afraid to say so. Put yourself in the review. Authors
love to know their readers and I know that I’m always touched when I
can tell someone made a personal connection with what I wrote.
- Talk about what you wanted to see more of or what needs improvement.
Do you wish another character was in the book more? Say so. Did bad
spelling distract you? Tell us that too.
Tips to remember: - Don’t be afraid to be honest. Do, however, remember to be helpful. Don’t just say “it sucks” but tell everyone why it sucked.
- Don’t give away the ending of the book. You can allude to it very
vaguely (“the ending surprised me”) but don’t say specific plot details.
- You’re not being graded. Write a review as long or short as you
want. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece of art—think of it more as a
conversation or what you might tell people you know about this book.
- Make sure that you read the book before you review. This seems like it should be obvious but… it’s not.
2) Do Amazon reviews actually affect a book’s sales? I have to be honest with you and tell you that I don’t yet know for
sure as I don’t have the “magic number” yet. This is what I understand
to be true from conversations with my publisher and other authors: - Around 20-25 reviews, Amazon starts including the book in “also
bought” and “you might like” lists. This increases your chances of
someone finding your title.
- Around 50-70 reviews, Amazon looks at your book for spotlight
positions and the newsletter. This is HUGE. This is my personal goal
although I use Amazon reviews for other reasons (more later on in this
post).
- Number of reviews may affect Amazon sales ranking. (Again, this is anecdotal–I have no actual proof of it.)
- Some websites will not consider or promote your book unless you have
a number of reviews on the page (this is very true of those sites that
highlight free promos—I can attest to this).
- And, of course, readers may read through your reviews and decide to purchase or not purchase the book based on this.
3) Whatever. I don’t care if you sell this wonderful/awful
book. Why should I write a review if it doesn’t change how you write the
next one? Oh, but it does. When I read my Amazon reviews, they tell me things that my editor
might not. Let’s face it, an editor is only one person and even with
beta readers, you’re working in a group of people who are familiar with
the craft of writing. What an author also needs is the opinion of the
average reader, that person who just picked up their book and doesn’t
have an English degree. While you have to have a tough skin about reviews, as an author,
they’re very helpful. They can reaffirm something that you were already
working on. For instance, I’d already decided to make one of my minor
characters in my first book a point-of-view character for the second—my
reviews have told me that people wouldn’t be uninterested in him. They
can also point out things that you need to work on. In my case,
exposition! Likewise, positive reviews tell you what you’re doing right. If
people rave about your characters, then that’s likely a good place to
keep going. If reviews talk about the fighting scenes in a positive
light, then you know you’re making a difference. So, in short, yes, what you write in that review is fairly likely to
change something about the book I’m working on now. Writing is a
process.
4) But I really hated the book! Should I still review it? Here is where I probably differ from some other authors so I’m going to speak only for myself here. Yes. Absolutely. How will I know where to improve unless I get
reviews that tell me so? Yes, it can be painful to read some reviews but
am I ever going to say that there isn’t truth in them? No.
After the initial sting, I’ll read it again and take something home from
that. I’ll be a better writer for it. To be honest, not everyone likes
every book. There are people out there who hate Harry Potter.
It would be a little presumptuous to think that all of my reviews would
be golden for any book (they’re not now and I don’t expect that to
change. Especially not if anyone reads this post. ). The only thing that I ask is to please make sure you have something
to say about why it is bad. The only review that I’ve ever been really
irritable about was a one-star on an old short horror story I posted for
fun where the reader said they were underage and hadn’t read it. Having said all of that, it is really tough to be a small press or
self-published author (I am the former). Bad reviews can kill a novel if
they’re the first ones a book receives or if they’re all that the book
has. Please hold this in mind if you decide to go forth. This post by Anne R. Allen does a good job of explaining the impact in more detail than I’ll get into here. Now that you’ve read all of that, if you have any questions, feel
free to comment and I’ll try to answer them. I am speaking from an
author’s standpoint but perhaps others will chime in with their own
thoughts on the process. (Feel free to share this post or copy it for your own blog. All I ask
is that if you do, please keep my author note here at the bottom.)
Gwen Perkins is a fantasy novelist who is always on the hunt for Amazon reviews for her first novel, The Universal Mirror (Hydra Publications, 2012). She can be contacted through email at gwen@ironangel.net. |
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Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:45 PM
Book news is leaving me overwhelmed this morning. Yesterday, a member of The Military Writers Society of America posted a review of my newest book on Amazon. By pure coincidence, hers was the tenth review of "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese," and that magic number made the book eligible for a free promotional period. So without my knowledge, The Mouse 's price dropped to $0.00 last night on Kindle, and the downloads began. By this morning, here's what the book listing looked like:
 It's an exciting development, because those rankings will promote sales even after the promotional period is over. Even better, I'm seeing some fallout for my other books as well. Several other sales have happened this morning. Somebody even bought the paper version of The Second Mouse.
Anyway, between watching the sales figures rise and trying to do another editing read-through of a 3/4-finished historical novel, I'm buried in virtual books! I can't promise how long the free offer will last; it will be purely at the whim of Amazon. So if you have ever considered exploring the possibilities of self-publishing, here's a place to pick up some free tips and advice. Happy reading.
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Posted on Thursday, February 09, 2012 11:20 AM
 On "Good Morning America" today, the "Play of the Day" featured a chimpanzee who is able to memorize the locations of randomly-placed numbers. He can handle as many as 19 numbers, even when he sees them for less than a second. I need that chimp!
 The numbers popping up all around me this morning are book prices -- my own book prices -- which have been changing and bouncing around without warning. When I began to plan for the book launch of "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese," I decided to reduce the prices of all the books on my website. Now, understand that we're just talking about trade paper copies of the books. (To get electronic editions, you have to go elsewhere.) So I took $3.00 (a nice round number) off both of my self-published books and offered free shipping. I already had cut the price of "A Scratch with the Rebels" in half because the remaining copies in my inventory have been laying around here for almost 5 years. I finished editing the website to reflect the new prices, and sat back, satisfied with my decisions.
Then up popped a couple of moles. First, Amazon lowered the price of of one of those books by 28%, making the paper version of "Mouse" a strange $9.32. Several days later, they lowered "Beyond All Price" by 15%, to $12.78. At that point, one of my special offers was lower than theirs, while the other was higher. Sales were doing a little better than I had expected, so I decided to leave well enough alone.
Ah, but we weren't through. I had set the price of "Mouse" on both Smashwords and Amazon at $0.99, which should have been appealing to budget-minded folks, but apparently wasn't. Meanwhile, the publisher of my 2007 history, "A Scratch with the Rebels" enrolled that book in the Kindle Select program and opted to take their free days right now. They're doing amazingly well. The Kindle free version has popped up at #2 in Civil War history, bested only by a version of Lincoln's Gettysburg address! But "Mouse" is suffering from the competition.
 There's only one solution to competing with a free book (even one of my own!). I have now listed "Mouse" on Smashwords for free. Will Amazon follow suit? Probably. They don't like being undersold. But when will that change occur? I have no way of telling. I'm just sitting here, waiting for that particular mole to pop up.
In my days of traditional academic publishing, I could release a book and sit back, knowing exactly what was going on -- a set price and standard distribution channels. But self-publishing? Wow! It's a constant challenge to keep up with the changes. Wonder how I contact that chimp! |
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Posted on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 9:56 AM
 Today is a celebration day, because my new book, The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: How to Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing is now available on Amazon. CreateSpace continues to surprise me with the speed at which they fulfill their obligations. To whet your appetite, here is a snippet taken from Chapter 2: "View Publishing as a Business."
Start Thinking Like a Business Owner
It’s one thing to decide you’ll self-publish your new book. It’s quite another to take all the steps necessary to become a publisher. Here’s the point you must understand: publishing a book starts long before the book is written. Publishing is a business, not an afterthought. So establishing a business was my first step.
A business needs a definition and a name. I started with the name, something I could use as a publishing imprint on my books. I didn’t want anything that would identify me too closely—not my name or a street address, nothing too cutesy, but something that would lend itself to a neat little logo. After coming up with several ideas, only to discover by way of a Google search that the name was already being used, I looked around the room where I was sitting and realized that all four of my cats were there keeping me company. My first thought was, “This is like living in a cat house.” Then, realizing the unfortunate connotations of that word, I switched to German, coming up with Katzenhaus Books and a simple black cat silhouette as a logo.
Next I asked myself what I wanted this business to do. The answer was fairly straightforward. Katzenhaus Books would produce, publish, promote, and sell one or more books of original historical fiction. It would remain flexible enough to expand into other book types. Perhaps eventually it would be able to offer similar services or advice to other writers who were seeking independent publishing choices.
Any business needs capital and a financial plan. During my academic career, I had relied on research grants to support the writing process, a publishing contract to pay production costs, and a publisher to bear the burdens of advertising and distribution. All I had to do was write. Now, all those expenses came back to me. I started my financial analysis by comparing several years of our living expenses against our income to discover how much discretionary income I had to play with. After deciding how much I could afford to risk on this venture, I did some research on self- publishing companies to estimate the total cost of a typical book. What I discovered was a wide range of offers, depending on how much help I was going to need.
 Order your copy now and read the rest of this article in Chapter 2 of The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese. Note: If you have a special order, want a mouse bookmark, or would like an autographed copy, you can also order the book from this website.
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Posted on Saturday, November 19, 2011 4:11 PM
Still not convinced that Amazon and Kindle are the most important elements in the marketing plan for your book? Before you write them off, here are nine things you ought to know about Amazon. This is not original. I'm just passing it on from several other websites.
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