Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 4

Writing Sci-Fi Space Battles? Watch this!

I stumbled upon this video while in the midst of writing my MilSF book with a kind of Star Trek/BSG vibe and I fully agree with this guy. Kudos to youtube for an excellent video suggestion. If you’re writing space battle sci-fi, you should watch this video and pay attention to what he talks about regarding stakes, movement, and knowing who’s in the battle.

Is Stratton Press a Scam?

Short answer: yes. Let me tell you why…

I was sitting in a group of people at the afterschool club I run, waiting for students to arrive and enjoying the conversation when my phone rang. The background noise indicated I was getting contacted from Delaware. The guy on the other end started trying to tell me how great my book was and was perfect for their book buyers and was apparently doing so well in its market that they were interested in working with me.

Dude called the wrong author. It became pretty apparent in a few short seconds that I knew more about his company than he did, and the people at my table were listening to me tear into a cold caller who thought I’d be an easy mark.

“Is your book selling well or…” he asked, and I interrupted him, “You just told me it was doing amazingly well and that’s why you called me.” But the nuance of his segue was not lost on me. He was trying to turn a corner to sell me something, implying that any dip in sales could be turned into a spike if I got into their catalogue.

“Let me stop you there, chief. If you’re about to ask me for money to put my book inside a catalogue or publication that you and I both know isn’t a viable place where actual readers shop for books, that’s going to be a hard pass from me.” If you look at their website, that’s exactly what he was about to pitch (the NY Rights Fair/Book Expo has a prominent place on their website.)

He tried to get out of our phone call and shut it down, but I made him stay on the line, mainly because I had questions for him. “I’m just curious how you got my personal cell phone number in the first place? You tried at first to make this seem like we’d connected online at some point, but we haven’t.” (There was the implication that I’d missed an email from them, and we verified that he did in fact have my personal email address, and the implication was that I may have been interested in an online zoom call or group seminar about working with them. I searched all my spam boxes. This was an engagement ploy.) I told him, “When you send me that follow up email from this phone call, I’m going to insist you tell me how you got it. Since this was a cold call and because I’m asking, I’m pretty sure you are legally obligated to provide that information… I’m not calling you out on the carpet,” I was, and those at the table were laughing, “but knowing that would be very useful so I can close down any loopholes in my SEO or something. I take privacy pretty serious and try to limit the sources of contact my readers and potential stalkers might reach out to me from.”

“Well, we are premium partners with Amazon and Google so we likely got it from our partnership with them.”

“I’m going to tell you that’s crap,” I burst his bubble. “Amazon doesn’t give out that information and I’m pretty sure google doesn’t either. I don’t think this ‘partnership’ is as big a deal as you’re trying to tell me it is.” I know how he got it. And I told him. The CANSPAM act and a few other laws meant to protect internet users against predators who wish to remain anonymous forces people who register domains to an actual address with real and verifiable addresses and phone numbers. Your email providers such as mailerlite and mailchimp will do the same. This is just another case of legislators exposing honest people to predators since law-abiders will, you know, follow the rules… those wanting to violate the spirit of that law will simply exploit them. Like harvesting data from the whois database or using datascrapers to collect phone numbers and other data.

Here’s the summary: they saw that one of my books had a lot of reviews and had been out for a while. They were contacting me specifically about Wolf of the Tesseract. If a book is more than two years old and has more than 50 but less than 200 reviews, it probably had a good run in its past, and an author may want to revive its glory days, making him or her a target for people selling author services and making pie-in-the-sky promises. I see these kinds of companies pop up all the time and are part of the “sharks in the swimming pool” club that I talk about when I give author seminars. Beware predators who prey upon your delusions of grandeur. Don’t let some shark devour your dream.

So here’s what a little research shows you about Stratton Press (I made sure the cold caller spelled it for me so I had it correct… a lot of scammers pop up, get shut down after their rep catches up with them, and then restart under the same or similar names with slightly altered spellings.)

They are not accredited by the BBB and there are a number of complaints lodged against them.Their pattern is that they cold call authors and appear to be targeting those books who are just a little past their prime, likely for reasons I already mentioned.The word Press in their title is misleading. They are an author services company who is representing themself as a traditional publisher; this is a surefire way to identify a scammer (working with them is a little like going on a date with someone who has obviously lied about who they are at the outset.)The fact that their Facebook’s web presence is managed by someone in the Philippines is suspicious. It’s not uncommon for American companies to do lots of business overseas, but inverse is rarely true.Their website is geared towards authors. Publishing companies that, you know, publish books are geared towards readers. The biggest indicator of a vanity press is when the website targets the writer instead of the reader—it indicates where the dollars are flowing and who the real customers of the business are.

Number five really is the most telling, but so are the complaints registered on their BBB page which talk about unhappy customers being refused refunds on publishing packages (any service that includes publishing packages is a scam publisher, BTW, and if you read my blog regularly, you know I band that drum often.) There is also evidence on a chain of reports that when the BBB stepped in, the company tried to absolve it with an end run around on a credit card reimbursement that wouldn’t seem to go through; I had a shady company try this once in the past… it’s a tactic meant to get someone to drop a dispute thinking that they’d gotten satisfaction (basically, your dispute gets caught in queue while they get to argue their side with the CC company and retain the funds. Some companies, especially overseas ones, will rack up a bunch of these under a shell corp and then torpedo it and start a new one, similar to credit card transfers/hopping by consumers… except their taking customers money with them rather than carrying debt out of it.) You can read some of the tales here.

Stratton has been around a couple years now and they have left a string of tears and broken promises according to people who have experiences with them (most of whom are much older and are in the prime age bracket to be targeted by “Nigerian princes.” Those people often have kids and grandkids on Reddit. Those folks report that the “Delaware” company has been hopping around the country in order to avoid the angry mobs catching up with them these last few years (I can find addresses in New York, Wyoming, Delaware, and the common tie is always their connection back to the Philippines.) One redditor says he even had an employee admit they were based in the Philippines and that they all use fake names (alluding that they may be using a VOIP system to spoof local to USA numbers and the company might not even be in America… and we’re back to the idea of trust and honesty in a publisher being necessary, and making me see the irony in how many “Christian books” the company pushes out.

Further, Victoria Strauss over at Writer Beware identifies Stratton as one of several clones who follow a specific playbook. It must be effective, because there are so many. Of course, that commonality is also why I was able to so readily identify them as bogus.

I am still waiting several days after their contact for an actual follow up email from Stratton, but I’m sure I’ve been marked internally as someone to avoid. I can live with that. At least the scammers are from US soil, judging by their command of the language and the fact that the call center does seem to be in Delaware. I guess running a scam from native soil props up the economy and keeps our dollars local right? …unless those dollars all wind up in the Philippines.

StoryOrigin & Bookfunnel: Advice for Rapidly Building an Email list with Integrity

Through writing newsletters, growing subscriber lists, and looking at data I discovered I’ve gone through multiple stages and seen many shady characters out there trying to build massive newsletter lists at unprecedented rates, but this game is about consistent, manageable growth while building relationships with actual, interested readers.

It is very possible to do this with some speed, but as you do so, beware of list leeches and newsletter stuffers. Below are three distinct stages I saw while growing a newsletter list with both Storyorigin and Bookfunnel.

Stage 1

I’m assuming a list at this stage is around 500ish. Prior to that, you simply need to get people on your list, a stage 0 if you will. In that period, learn to build your automation tweak your reader magnet(s,) write effective emails, find your voice, etc. Once you’re above 300 (I have a few articles at the bottom of this with some tips and resources to get there,) your goals should aim for fast growth. Don’t “list stuff” by adding 30 swaps and joining every promo you can! Make smart choices: run your newsletter at least twice per month and join up to 6 group promo efforts and aim for two swaps in each NL with authors around 1000-1500 if possible. Focus on reader magnet swaps and not UBL/sales swaps… play the long game and get readers on your list/sales later rather than UBLs and sales now.

Pay attention to data. Similar/larger list sizes are nice, but all the better if they have click rates beyond single digits. Also, make sure your partners are in the right genre. Don’t compromise for false-similarity! UF and paranormal are fine swap partners for the Academy genre but do not place faith in swaps for any books that have obvious romance elements: those lists tend to have lots of subs but their lists will yield garbage rates for a straight UF/P or academy book. Those lists are typically built around romance subs who won’t often click on straight UF/P unless they feature ripped abs or blatant T&A on a cover (I found that out the hard way with my own UF). Understanding these dynamics is a key to effective growth.

I do understand that PNR, Shifter Romances, and the like are valid genres with many readers. But after doing this for a few years, I have discovered that PNR, Shifter Romance, and pretty much any kind of Romance/Genre hybrid authors are email send sluts. I may trademark that word. But here’s the gist: they tend swap with anybody. Okay… not all of them are send-sluts, but of all the list stuffers and mis-genred swap requests I’ve had, at least 75% of them are Shifters, Erotica, or PNR. Just be aware that this will leave you feeling taken advantage of once you see the resulting data.

SO now has the option to view a list’s past performance. Don’t swap with anyone who has a NL that produced 0 clicks: it means they didn’t send the NL and are a list leech (they get their book shared by others and do not reciprocate). I look for proof of sharing when I consider a swap and even when I choose to accept a user in a group promo: I look to make sure the author is not a list stuffer… I had a request for a swap last week with a PNR author who has 16,000 followers. That’s triple my list; exciting, right? I clicked her stats and saw that last week she stuffed with 65 shares. One or two books had like 20-30 clicks (they were romance/erotica books) and the rest had paltry single digits, 4-8 clicks. More than a dozen had 0 clicks… I didn’t even bother counting the multiple group shares she was in with lackluster results. The data indicates her list is really only relevant to readers who want dirty books. Those books run by different rules (some are easier; some are harder… turgid even. (That’s an erotica joke, mom.)

Over all, try to keep your total sharing threshold (combination of swaps and group promos) at or below 10 at this stage.

Anyway, if you are at less than 1000 readers you might consider finding a paid “list builder” and/or giveaway promo (like the kind that gives away a kindle with the promo group’s books preloaded.) Both will cost you some money (about $50-100) and should be genre specific. Both will prove worth it early in the game since it will get you 300-1000 new subs in a few weeks’ time and in the NL swap game, subscribers are a form of currency and will open the door to better swaps.

Stage 2

Once you get to about 2,000 subs you should start worrying about list health and actively trimming the nonopeners, etc. to get click rates up and then start aiming for more organic/quality growth and get more choosy about group promos you join in order to keep it at 2-4 until you feel the need to throttle it down even more. At this stage, the single biggest things I look for in group promos are:

1) The right genre—a hundred partners in the wrong genre will net me single digit clicks.

2) The right purpose—a promo for sales when I need subscribers is always a concern.

3) An amazing/attractive banner graphic. Frankly, the banner is the only thing that will motivate a subscriber to click and then potentially see your book and click again. It’s a multi-step funnel. If there are 100 sharers on the cumulative lists and they each send 10 folks to the promo you’ve got 1000 eyes on 100-300 books. You may get something like 20-60 clicks and about 2/3 of them will be freebie seekers who downloaded every book in the promo and will likely never open an email from you (you’ll have to cull them later) leaving you with 8-12 actual subscribers. Now imagine that same promo but with a bad graphic that averages 2 clicks per sub (which may be optimistic since I’ve seen many bad banners pull 0 clicks.) Now you have 200 eyes on 100-300 books and you’re lucky to get 4 valid new subscribers. I try not to join something with a banner I am not excited about unless it’s run by a quality promoter I know or includes an author I know (or unless I’m desperate to fill a slot. It happens, but desperate additions tend to be a coin flip in the next stage since they can drag down CTRs.)

Smaller lists tend to run with any promo they can get into at first and rely on a broad, scatter-shot mentality which can get a sub count up quickly, but once you’re close to 2,000 subscribers, other swap partners will start paying greater attention to your data. And I know if I had a choice between a swap partner with 2,000 subs with a 40% open rate and a 19% CTR vs. a list that is 10,000, 8% open rate, and 3% CTR, I’m picking the smaller list every time. You don’t just want eyes on you at this stage in the game, you want qualified eyes.

Hot Tip: improve your Open and Click Rates by resending your newsletter a few days after the first send, but targeting only nonopeners so genuine readers don’t get a double send. This improved my total open rate to about 175% of its original numbers.

Stage 3

Once you break past that level (I’m not sure there’s a solid metric—for me it was roughly based on the next payment rate vs. subscriber count for my mailing list provider—it may be different user to user) you will want to make other decisions and zero in on what your list is all about. I ‘m currently around 5k users and typically only run 2 group promos in any given newsletter (1 in Bookfunnel & 1 in Storyorigin) and book swap with only 1 or 2 partners because I am aiming for list health and slow growth. If I run more than that, my readers will feel I’m too much like a catalogue or ad-heavy and I’ll see unsubcribes or reduced click rates.

Because I wanted to have higher quality swaps, I joined Nick Stephenson’s Dream Team Network. One indicator that showed me I needed to change some of my tactics and target higher quality (more focused) swaps was when I realized my list was still growing at about the normal rate (a little over 350 new readers per month,) but 0-1 new opt-ins for my ARC team (an invitation is auto sent to new subs after 45 days or so). That revealed to me that my list quality had been suffering, and it had been that way for at least 6 months. Ask any cancer patient: not all growth is desireable.

When I was at 2500 subs I also joined Bookfunnel because I was seeing a lot of repeat traffic in my promos and wanted to broaden my base while also keying in on quality (FYI, both platforms have their pros and cons, but SO allows you to add affiliate IDs to your tracking links meaning I will also lean to SO for a sales promo vs. Bookfunnel… I make more money per sale that way.) Feel free to broaden your reach with other services, but understand that you have different goals at different levels.

Constantly red-lining your list at 3000 rpm and staying in massive-growth-mode at all times will yield you that 16,000 subscriber list, but it’ll have garbage results and will alienate your peers and only ever get the small list partners to swap with you; you’ll be a big fish in a small pond, sure… but those big fish tend to always remain on the brink of starvation. You also won’t connect with readers, and that means you’ll suffer with read-through and your base will suffer. If you’re not trying to connect with readers through actual newsletters, then you’re just an advertising list. Trust me, you’re not going to dethrone bookbub, and I wouldn’t even pay the $5 on Fiverr that some of those ad-lists for books want. Fiverr is amazing for many services, but IMO, those services are typically garbage and never bring me a return—especially since you typically only see Stage-1 books advertised on them (and they usually have covers built by DIYers who didn’t even use Fiverr to have a decent cover created.)

Hopefully this helps you.

In the first year of using SO I added over 3k new subscribers and through culling, unsubs, etc. I hung around at the 6000 mark for quite some time and had to cull below 5000 regularly to keep from paying higher newsletter send rates by deleting 0-click users. Finally I did a massive sweep and wound up at around 3500 actual readers (which made me realize the timing would reflect slow growth at about 2500+ but continuing the stage 1 rapid growth model bloated my list with freebie-seekers and tanked my open rates… I’m still recovering from that.)

Every author will need to decide where their thresholds for change are and what their metrics will be for each level. I’m still growing and expect to make more decisions regularly. It’s an ongoing process, so track data and read much on the topic… but always, always, always, avoid list leeches and newsletter stuffers. Anyone who’s ever seen me give my seminar “Sharks & Turds in the Swimming Pool” will understand those partners are turds. They’ll either make you suspicious by proximity/association or will get crap all over you.

For more on NL list growth and NL swap best practices, check out

How to Use SO to Grow Your List and

Why is My Mailing List Not Growing

You can’t always price your book at 99c on Amazon

There’s one simple rule authors have to follow in order to have complete pricing control over your book at Amazon. It is especially helpful to be aware of this rule for Children’s book authors, graphic novelists, and books with multimedia content (many nonfiction books) as it can affect launch and pricing strategies.

I recently bumped into this rule, even though I write novels, and here’s how I discovered the need to watch for this rule.

I recently did a large box set that included eleven fantasy novels from ten authors as a way to cross promote series starters and experiment with bundle services. The bundling publisher let me know after it had been compiled that it had a minimum price of 1.99, even though it was really only text files.  The boxset had a wordcount around a million words and I wasn’t thinking in terms of file size. We wound up north of Amazon’s pricing rule.

Here’s the rule:

With ebook file sizes under 3mb you can price .99 to $200 for a 35% royalty

With ebook file sizes 3mb to less than 10mb you can price 1.99 to $200 for a 35% royalty

With ebook file sizes 10mb and more you must price between $2.99 to $200 for a 35% royalty

Ebook file sizes have no size restictions if $2.99 to $9.99 and they get a 70% royalty

–full breakdown of the rule with nonUS market prices here (https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560)

This is one of those little rules that we kind of know after a few times through setting up books for online sale and distribution, but it is easy to forget, make assumptions, or just overlook it when creating book launch plas or pricing strategies. For example, one of our bundle participants had said that 99c books move especially well on her mailing list, but anything higher tends to do very poorly and so we were setting up an initial book launch period of 99c for the first month.

Luckily, not all platforms follow this rule and the book bundle remains 99c in all other markets (B&N, Kobo, etc.) as it is a wide release, but it’s something you will want to bear in mind if you are planning a title that might end up with a larger file size, especially if it’s something that can be anticipated, such as a children’s book or other title that will have large graphic components as those will dramatically increase your file size.

Easy Bake Ovens and Cover Designs: What is a Cover Really Supposed to Do?

I am a member of several online groups that helps authors. One of those groups purposes revolves around cover design. There are a lot of DIY people in there… most of those people know the value of hiring professionals or seeking advanced skills and learning the real elements of what makes book covers sell.

Sometimes people insist on doing themselves and don’t understand why covers are perhaps the most important marketing piece for your book. I taught a workshop at a regional library just yesterday afternoon and my sternest warning was against doing a DIY cover. Here is some of my advice that I recently gave in a cover design group where I used an Easy Bake Oven analogy to explain what a subpar design really tells potential readers. (Also, I talk about selling Bible’s in a porn shop… I’m not surprised that so many people dislike me, lol.)

OP posted a design with very blocky space ships he had used in her cover design. He explains why when he disagrees with my advice below.  For context, he’s posted in the group multiple times in the last many days, always ignoring people who encourage him to get a professional cover and he has dug in his heels on using a space ship that looks like a tiny, white X.

OP: what kind of space background could I add to this to help make the black ships look huge and far away? [graphic is just some faded out ships that look conspicuously like they were pulled from a star wars screenshot in order to mask their origins… but Lucasfilm always knows]

Me: you need different ships. Maybe ships that look like ships (at least as far as your readers will expect). Covers are about communicating genre and meeting quality expectations. So far, you’re only communicating that you’re book wasn’t worth investing in a quality cover. That tells readers you likely didn’t invest much in the writing process and that the content is poor (why hire an editor if you wouldn’t hire an artist?)

I’m not saying that’s true, just telling you what your cover design communicates to the reader (I’ve watched you ask the same questions and ignore everyone’s advice for a week now). everyone judges a book by its cover, and in the Indie world, because the quality of the cover typically does reflect the quality of the content.

OP: One, I’m still learning and two the white ship is non human origin

Me: origins don’t matter. Neither does your lack of experience. If someone takes you out for a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant and you order the chocolate cake but they bring you something from an easy bake oven, you’d feel cheated. Your book is a fancy diner. Your cover is NOT ABOUT YOU. it is about communicating quality and genre to the readers. this is all sales and marketing. a product that you have to consistently provide excuses for will result in bad reviews and frustration on your part.

Please understand that I am telling you this as someone who did exactly what you did: learned photoshop and did a few covers. One that I was proud of ended up on one of those “bad cover awards” websites. I started looking at it from a sale-ability/business standpoint and realized they were totally right. I changed my covers on a dime (about 90-150 per cover) and sales immediately tripled. I went from selling maybe 12-20 books at events to regularly selling out. I didn’t change sales pitches… what changed is that I communicated value by the cover. My sales pitch communicated value to readers, but the cover told them I was lying, which discouraged sales because their experience with the book so far (immediately consuming the cover art graphics) did not agree with what I was telling them about the book and instantly broke their trust. and you cannot sell without trust.

Learning is awesome–I hope you are taking a class or a workshop to learn more than the basics… but your first book is too important to leave to a self-professed amatuer. don’t try to pass an easy-bake oven cake for something high-end (which is what your readers will want to see… there is too much competition in the indie publishing world to release something with a substandard cover.)

I hope this helps; I really am rooting for you, but you’re making mistakes I once made and which are obvious to me. Do what you want with your cover, but remember that several folks in the last week or so tried to steer you on the best path, first (I’ve been watching you ignore advice and dig in on the idea of DIY for at least that long). The reason for that is, as I’ve experienced, it is far more difficult to course correct later, for a variety of reasons.

OP: My first series the covers cost me 75-100 each and the second series book one the cover cost 600 pounds. Now I’ve run out of money because that last has not sold much better than the cheap covers. I’m done publishing this year so I can take as long as I need to get the covers right. I do know what a good cover should look like.

Me:  I checked out your books online. The cheaper covers communicate your genre much better… and that really reinforces what I’m trying to say about covers. I paid a similar amount for art on one of my earlier SF books. Good art doesn’t always mean it’s the best cover for you. I rebranded and paid less for the entire series than for the first piece of art. It was an expensive lesson… and that sucks, but at least you can move forward from there.

(I’m looking at [book name], and it’s a good looking cover, but when you look at it, you think Military SF/Space Exploration. The book is SF comedy. That means you are trying to sell the wrong kind of content to the wrong audience: you’re trying to sell Bibles in a porno shop. It’s no wonder they aren’t moving.)

At the end of the day, if you want your cover to engage the audience, your cover should look as similar to the books on your genre’s top selling list as possible—AND a random person should be able to identify the genre at a glance. This means that they should not be books by huge name authors (whose name sells books) because that’s a different animal altogether. JK Rowling could simply put her name on the front in huge letters and a teeny tiny title like Case of the Jiggly Pudding Pops and it would sell a million copies on day 1. Her platform (name recognition) sold those, not the cover. If you’re not a millionaire from book sales already, don’t do that.

The best thing you could do is smartly invest in a good cover.

Get smart advice: Consultations and Advice in Actions

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One thing is always good advice: get insights from those who have gone before us.

I mentioned yesterday that I do consultations for authors who have questions or want to get feedback/improve sales, clicks, marketability, etc. I’ve often found it helpful to get feedback… not always does it need to be mine, however. One of the most valuable things I’ve taken from author conferences is public reviews/manuscript critiques from industry pros of attendees’ works. I take the relevant info and apply it to my own works and have learned a lot.

Here is a sample critique…

Having checked out your amazon author profile, I get the feeling that we write a lot of the same kinds of things, so hopefully my advice points you in the right direction (better sales and more clicks… I did coach one fantasy author into a big 5 publishing author, but there was a significant amount of luck involved.)

First, let’s talk about having something in place for readers to engage with. I assume you have an email list/newsletter that releases at least monthly? It should also be set up for automation and onboarding (when someone signs up, your service provider automatically sends them a few scheduled emails that are tailored to read as if you wrote the new subscriber a personalized message.) My go to manual on this is Tammi Labrecque’s Newsletter Ninja books.

Another book I highly recommend is Craig Martelle’s Release Strategies… I’m not saying an author needs to use “rapid release” guidelines as he seems to suggest, but there’s a lot of raw data and numbers in the book that has made me at least think about how strategizing my release intersects with my newsletter.

The other book I would recommend (though there are many out there) is Brian Meeks’ Mastering Amazon Descriptions which talks about copyrighting and the purpose of hooks, descriptions, blurbs, etc. and how they are different.

Finally, I will point you to my blog: https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com/

there are a few articles there you may find helpful, especially about growing email lists and using storyorigin, bookfunnel, etc. Here’s your most relevant article, https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/why-is-my-mailing-list-not-growing/

Let’s talk about your cover on Demon Tamer. It’s very dark… I know that Frank Franz and Boris Vallejo did lots of very dark covers, but there’s had a certain level of intricacy and focus that still drew in the eye. Content wise, the character looks like a barbarian, not a roman as the blurb suggests, and there’s also a dragon on it… is this a demon story or a high fantasy?  Also, your title is dim and off center meaning it doesn’t mean industry standards (and I REALLY really really hate the 3d dragon that is superimposed… every other indie with a fantasy novel uses it because it’s on a free stockart website. But never mix 3d rendered art with other art styles.) The best thing you could do is hire an artist from fiverr to get a decent cover for $80-140. That is the single greatest thing you can do right now to increase clicks.

You’ll never get professional results without professional art.  never use art by friends, because then you feel obligated to use it, and when it under-performs it makes you look like a bad guy for making professional changes. I consulted for one guy’s series that sounded great, but his covers were made his teenage kids and so he refused to change them. The fact is, he will never sell many copies because people will assume the interior content is not professional if the outside is not.

Sidenote, I recommend you change the verbiage from Volume 1 to Book 1. A volume is a book, but sometimes its books. It’s fine for now, but if you are writing in a series you may decide you want to structure/arrange stories differently in the future.

Once you have clicks, you need a real tight description. Your back cover of the physical book has a description that you pasted to the description for your amazon review. It’s what most people do who don’t know any better.  But here’s my philosophy on books.

I assume my books are awesome and that someone will love it if they pick up a copy (which means I had better have done a good job as a story teller and actually gotten the book properly edited!)
They will never read the book if they do not have it, so I must give them every reason to take it (and even then, +80% of people with a free copy will not ready it simply because it has no value… when the book cost them nothing to acquire, it will remain a very low priority to actually read it.) All obstacles to purchase/resistance should be minimized.
The purpose of the cover is to engage the eye and create initial interest, not to communicate details from the story (if you can do both, excellent.) The one thing from your story it must communicate is the genre. At a casual glance, a consumer should not know if your book is an independent/self-pub title or a traditional pubbed book. (this is why industry standards + high quality are a must).
If the cover passes muster you must have an engaging description/hook. The purpose of the amazon/kobo/smashwords description is make a consumer buy the book. If they purchase it, you can assume they’ll read it, but descriptions are the elevator pitch and the “ask for sale.”
Back covers and longer form summaries are acceptable (still only about 350 words) which should have part of your strong hook from the description and a light/no-spoiler summary.
Finally, you should have a killer opening and first page of your story. It must grab a reader immediately (especially the first sentence. I typically write about 4-5 drafts of a story, a few extra revisions on Ch1, and the first sentence and paragraph even more than that.)

Using those guidelines, you should revisit your back cover. It almost fits into this model, but it’s in all capital letters. Stylistically, that’s fine, except that your character fights with Diosmed (pretty sure that’s a demon name?) in all caps, I couldn’t see the first letter as a proper noun and I initially thought it was a spelling error and had to re-read the sentence. That’s resistance to the sale. Also, when I first looked up your book, I came to your paperback listing (I much prefer physical books). Your kindle stub is formatted properly, but the paperback is not (just one giant glob of text.) Seeing your kindle stub, though, I see you know how to do the formatting, so you’re headed in the right direction and will want to get on that.

You will also want to break up that TLDR description on the paperback by moving the reviews to the “editorial reviews” section of the book (in amazon author central).

Regarding your description and blurbs, I recommend using only familiar words—or words that become familiar given the context. Using the above, instead of Diosmed, I would say “the demonic Diosmed” so the reader understands. You don’t want readers to have to consult a dictionary to read a blurb. They won’t do it; they will simply choose not to buy the book. You should also set the stakes for the book. You tell us your MC’s abilities and talk about conflict, but that doesn’t tell us enough.

You can use the same description for the amazon listing as your reader magnet page. I noticed they were different, though you might rethink giving away the book at this stage (thinking back to release strategies.) You might want to wait to give away book 1 until book 2 is out so that readers will buy the second installment. Optionally, you could write a short story prequel with your main character or make the reader magnet only a sample or portion.

Here is your description

The Demons persecute him. The Romans chase him. His heart does not falter.

The spathae collide, the foci of the arena burn with an intense red fire, the bodies of the fallen lie on the ground between the blood and the dust. Damian finds himself in a hellish battle from which he cannot escape.

In front of the screaming crowd, gladiators and demonic beasts fight with great ferocity and the ancient power that Damian holds within him manifests itself in that precise moment. His memories are clouded and the dagger he holds in his hands gives him the strength to fight and rediscover his secret past.

The Roman legionaries had captured him by deception. But why? What does the Emperor Constantine want from him?

Here is how I would rewrite it

Damian sees Demons.

A Roman Legion is in pursuit.

Emperor Constantine wants his head.

Forced to fight in the arena, Damian finds himself in a hellish battle from which he cannot escape. Not all of his opponents are human.

Damian has always known there was something different about him, though he cannot remember his past or what secrets his mystic dagger holds. He only knows battle, fire, and pain. The Roman soldiers captured him and forced him to fight in the pits, and now XYZ.

Now, with XYZ doing ABC, if he cannot [accomplish task] before [time limit], [stakes (XYZ happens, Damian will never do XYZ, etc.)]

Buy now and begin a journey 2,000 years in the making.

The spathae and foci are $10 words. Just drop them entirely, they will confuse readers rather than intrigue them. I think you’ll find the above has better success. Remember, it’s not just what you know, but engaging with readers based on what they know. You have to hook them before they know the rest of the story.

State of Writing

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My state of Writing posts have become pretty infrequent as of late. Many irons in the fire, plates spinning, etc. This blog is not abandoned, however, and I have been working on some new content between writing projects. one of them is a graphical layout of my marketing plan that is organized like a flowchart. I was hoping to put it together as an online course this year… but I’ve not quite put it all together, yet. That’ll happen with a huge writing load. I will have written something like 9 books in 2020 (thanks for the downtime, coronavirus.)

I’ve also done quite a bit of consulting with authors on how to improve their books and/or get their book into print or republish books.

“Any Time Reviews” is an old scam re-emerged

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Anytime Reviews, or http://www.anytimereviews.com is like a zombie plague for authors; it keeps resurfacing after its death. I’ve said it before, but you will never be cold-called/cold-contacted by a legitimate service or publishing agent/publisher unless you’ve sold a million books (and likely in a single title).

I was BCCed by somebody with the address fatlossplrryo2e@gmail.com… That’s a suspicious start—not exactly the email address you’d expect from a legitimate book review company. A little internet research on the old google box brought me down the rabbit hole.

Some dude (allegedly) named Rupert M. uses that email address. He sent me this snazzy email.

As of this writing, I am the only guy offering GUARANTEED reviews for Amazon and Goodreads. Under this scheme, if you don’t get a certain number of reviews for your book, you will get a refund from me. If you are looking for more reviews for your book, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Sure you are, Rupert.

Common sense says I should ignore it, right? But I have been accused of sometimes being two nickles short of a penny, so I thought I’d get back to him and ask what his website address is… mainly so I could do a little research and out someone who is violating Amazon’s TOS. Plus spamming. And also being named Rupert (allegedly).

“Rupert” sent me a website masked by a bitly redirect but it brought me to a nonfunctioning website at anytimereviews.com. He was kind enough to include a pdf file while saying “If the above link does not work, try this [link to google drive pdf].” I’m pretty sure old Rupes knew his link would be dead.

It turns out, by simply searching his email address, he was up to this same trick back in 2016, 2017, and also renewed again in 2018 (albeit under a different email address in 2018). I guess he figured 2020 wasn’t bad enough and we needed one more thing to be disgusted by. Enter Rupert.

Our story’s villain used to run a website called votemyreviews.xyz/contact.html and he was peddling the same hot trash back then, too, also mass spammed to author lists and with no way to opt out, unsub, etc (a CANSPAM violation). Of course, it’s important to realize he needs an ARC copy and we’re certain Rupert (or Doug or any of his other monikers) would never upload them to a disreputable pirate site, right? We can trust him. [sarc.]

Rupert and his many aliases have swapped many combinations of websites and email handles while hawking fake review services (and those services likely produce paid generic reviews posted by multiple accounts all owned by whatever basement dwelling Chad has setup this whole ring of irritation.) But he promises, “This is NOT a paid review service; the payment you make is not for reviews (the reviewers don’t paid get a dime) but an administrative cost toward arranging, tracking and reporting for the same. Therefore, my review service is 100% compliant with Amazon’s terms of service.” …just trust the Rupert.

One thing I do know, is that those reviews will get taken down by Amazon’s sophisticated AI/fake review hunter-killer bots. Luckily Rupert heads this off in his short FAQ: “My review got deleted. What’s up?” He promises, “Review sites occasionally delete reviews. I can’t be held responsible for this. Under my guaranteed review service I will help by reposting the review one more time, free of cost!” Which is super cool and shows Amazon that you (the author) insists on continuing to work with paid reviewers thereby increasing the likelihood that you receive a permanent and lifetime ban from Amazon.

But wait! There’s more! He also copies those reviews to Goodreads, so there’s that, too. (BTW, Goodreads is aware of this delinquent activity from his previous years of “Ruperting.” In fact, our mysterious “Rupert” also goes by a number of other email addresses that can be discovered with a few clicks of the mouse.

I am guessing he just swaps out an email address and then recycles it later. That may partly be because he requests his payment through paypal. I booked him for his service and he sent me an invoice (that way I can track down more info on him.) Apparently, Rupert likes his Rupees. He requested to be paid in INR which means he’s likely from India. The payment came from his company called Verge Soft Inc. They can be found at http://www.verge-soft.com/ but don’t bother… it says literaly nothing except contact us at webmaster AT verge-soft.com. I find it ironic he wrote it that way so as to avoid being spammed. Oh, Rupert. If you’d like to spam him, his email address is piggoli@gmail.com and he is most certainly in India (according to his digital footprint and requests at an activity in Mumbai.)

Peeling beneath the hood of their WHOIS data we can find that the owner of the domain registered it from P.O. Box 0823-03411 in Panama, Panama. Searching out that address turns up data about an interconnected scheme involving everything from travel fraud, to website scraping and URL reselling scams, and one of the largest bulk spam services in the UK. They have also been linked to malware schemes and possible ransomware with an investment phishing program to round it out with some blatant, good old fashioned thievery.

Rupert and the search for 25,000 Rupies has turned into a dark tale of loss and woe. I fear this tangled web of deceit and malfeasance might spiderweb off into so many directions that it would take ages to uncover and would likely end up with my children kidnapped and my dog murdered.

Hopefully you get the point, though: legitimate services don’t buy lists of authors collected by spambots so they can try to earn a few bucks off them in bulk.

Yes. Reviews are worth begging. They are a critical factor in your marketing endeavors. But you can’t take a shortcut to get them. Not only are you risking a permaban from amazon by using them, but people all around the world can target you for further criminal action or even steal your identity (including your book) for future tomfoolery and jackassery. Don’t take a shortcut. It can cost you dearly in the end.

 

 

State of Writing

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I Know, it’s been a while since I last blogged about anything writing related… I’ve been, well, writing. And learning a lot about marketing. My books are selling quite a bit better than ever online, which has been helpful due to the pandemic situation and the cancellation of all my in-person events (I estimate a $30,000 net loss from the shutdown.)

Anyway, I’ve still been pretty active and responding with questions on the blog and doing some consulting. I’ve also been working hard to grow my newsletter list to 4,000 subs and monetize it. Currently in the middle of FOUR books! A nonfiction one, two more books in my new high fantasy series (the Esfah Sagas) though one of those is co-written, and another one that is a rough outline.

Just thought I’d pop in because I do have a new blog post coming out this week!

 

Tuesday Deals!

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It’s been a while since posting a deal here, so I thought I’d mention this one–it looks like there’s a bunch of great options in this one (all high quality and free or under a buck!) My newest is in here for free