Gamal Hennessy's Blog, page 15

Life, Death and Sock Puppets

A few days ago, a New York Times article revealed a little known practice in the self publishing business. It appears that several authors, some of them very high profile, are paying companies to write great reviews for their books on Amazon and on other sites. Some writers go one step further and pay for people to write very bad reviews of books written by their competitors. These paid writers are referred to as sock puppets and they could have a major effect on the publishing industry. What’s Wrong With Sock Puppets? The problem sock puppets create is twofold; first because there are so many books available online, many people make their choice of what to read based on skimming the reviews a book gets. They work under the theory that if a lot of other people liked a book, they might like it too. That theory is fine if you tend to like mainstream work, but it completely falls apart if a book gets 75 great reviews all written by one person who was paid to write them.The bigger issue might affect Amazon directly. I am under the impression that the algorithms that Amazon uses to recommend books to people take the average customer review into account. If there are three hundred books on salsa dancing available, the first books you’re going to see are going to be the ones with more good reviews. I don’t think most people don’t search every result for every book search they do. I’m sure many of them only skim one or two pages of results. If the sock puppet books fill up those pages, the writers who didn’t pay for good reviews will never be seen and never be purchased.Loving to Hate Sock PuppetsThe more I learned about sock puppets, the more ambivalent I became. I spend a lot of time reading and writing about corporate spies and espionage. I am very familiar with the concepts of deception, persuasion and subterfuge. I can accept the idea that paid messages can come in the form of ads, sponsored blogs, subliminal messaging and other forms of psychological warfare. I don’t think there is anything sacred about customer reviews whether they are for hotels, electronics or books. It feels like the inevitable struggle that occurs whenever someone learns how to manipulate a system for their own purposes.
But as a writer I still have questions and dilemmas created by sock puppets. Why should I spend months trying to get real reviews if someone can spend $500 to get 50 fake ones? How do I even know how many sales the sock puppets are going to get me? Are these authors devaluing their own efforts for 10 extra sales or 10,000? Even if I did decided to pay for sock puppets, what am I saying about my own work? The last question is the most important one for me. Does paying for reviews make me a pragmatic publisher who adapts to the market in ways that will maximize sales or does it make me an insecure writer who isn’t confident enough in his work to let it stand on its own?

The Best Stories You May Never Read
At this point, I think I'm just going to go back to writing and leave the sock puppets to their marketing masters. I am too vain about my craft and too unsure about the real benefits of manipulating the system. My refusal to use sock puppets might mean that I am creating the best stories that no one will ever see. But at the very least, I want to feel good about what I'm doing. Have fun.G

The Other Benefits of Independent Publishing (Beyond Becoming a Millionaire)

The summer is over and I’m looking back on my self publishing experiment. Three months and seven stories later, I have come to three conclusions:1.       I started this process with the intent of becoming a writer. I now know that I am not a writer. I am actually a publisher because I have to take care of web design, cover design, marketing, sales, formatting, advertising AND writing.2.       Although neither the process nor the product have been perfect, I am very proud of what I’ve put out there and I’m excited to write and release more work.3.       Writing the stories is easy. Getting people to notice them is hard. Getting people to actually read them is almost impossible so far. That means achieving the same sales as Harry Potter, 50 Shades of Gray or the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is still a distant dream.Does that mean the stories suck and I’m a horrible writer? Maybe. Does that mean my marketing sucks and I’m a horrible advertiser?  Probably. Does that mean I haven’t been lucky enough to reach the right audience yet? Definitely.A writer for the Huffington Post named Scott Steinberg recently wrote about the benefits of self publishing that go beyond sales numbers. According to him, sales are still important but releasing your own book gives you are chance to: 1.       Increase engagement with your audience2.       Demonstrate your talents 3.       Provide a low-risk way to test potential markets 4.       Create a unique promotional tool 5.       Promote critical fan feedback 6.       Offer an immediate way to set you apart whether you are an individual, brand or company I haven’t found a pot of gold after writing for 90 days. I have done everything else on this list and I’m proud of that. The Great Expectations that I wrote about before haven’t changed. If anything, I see my writing taking me to places I could never reach sitting at home and watching TV. Is all this pontification just a rationalization of a failed business venture? It could be. But I would rather find some benefit in the things I enjoy doing instead of giving up because I haven’t made as much money as EL James.Have fun.
G

The Art of Intelligence: A Book Review

by Gamal HennessyI try to read real word accounts of intelligence and espionage to inspire my writing so I was looking forward to reading Art of Intelligence. As I started reading it, I thought it was excellent. The more I read, the less I loved it but it is still a very good book. The book is basically an autobiography of the author’s life in the CIA. It also is a personal account of the history of espionage from the Cold War to the beginning of the Iraq War. It’s a four part story. In the first part, Crumpton recounts his motivations for joining the CIA and his training. The second part discusses his work as a case officer and recruiter of spies in Africa and Europe. This is the most impressive part of the book. The author does a very good job of describing tradecraft and telling compelling stories without ever revealing where he was, who he met or what he was doing. If he only told stories like this for the rest of the book, I would have given it five stars.The third portion of the book focuses on his years in the counter terrorism and the leadership role he had in the Afghan War. While this section was well done, I found myself incredulous as I read it. I felt like he took credit for every success in that conflict and predicted every eventual outcome. I felt like he pinned every failure and miscalculation on someone else. While that might be what actually happened, I find it hard to believe. Even spymasters get it wrong sometimes. The last part of the book talks about his work in the State Department and as an academic. This was the weakest part of the book and read like a sermon from Captain America, but that doesn’t make his conclusions any less valid. Crumpton has a unique and authoritative view of espionage and the Art of Intelligence is one of the better books on the subject that I have ever read.Have fun.Gamal

Your First Look at Must Be the Music

The new erotic anthology from the Nightlife Publishing goes on sale in a few days. Here is a look at the cover and a preview of the story.


 These two erotic stories are dedicated to the DJ.  In Let the Music Play, a man looks for love behind the turntables and finds himself lured by a beautiful woman into a risky liaison.  In Dance for Me, a DJ spins tracks for his lover, but what happens when his music inspires her to dance with another man? 
 This title...

Your First Look at Family Affair

The new crime thriller from the Nightlife Publishing goes on sale in a few days. Here is a look at the cover and a preview of the story.
  Harrison Trent is a freelance operator who is haunted by his past, paranoid about his present and uncertain of his future. When an alluring acquaintance tempts him to kill for her will he be consumed by his own demons or killed by his predatory enemies? This title goes on sale on Amazon on September 4th. Authors, book reviewers and...

How Often Do You Give Up on a Book?

I just stopped reading a book after only reading about 25% of it. It was dull, half baked and overall it was pretty pointless.

Part of me feels like I'm wasting money by abandoning a book that I paid for before I'm even halfway through it. Part of me feels like I'm wasting time reading a book that bores me.

Do you finish every book you start? If you don't what makes you turn away from a book mid read? I'd like to know because I want to avoid doing things in my own writing that turn people off...

What to do When Bullets Start Flying (Responding to an Active Shooter)

By Gamal HennessyMost of my writing deals with crime fiction, but I often come across things in my research that can be helpful in real life, especially when you consider recent events. The news over the past year has emphasized the idea that brutal massacres are not limited to war zones or ghettos. They are happening in summer camps (Norway), movies theaters (Colorado) and now churches (Wisconsin).While the mainstream media will trot out the usual suspects from the pro and anti gun lobby, it...

Why Women Have Sex: A Book Review

The sexual motivations of women have consumed men since the Middle Ages (and probably earlier than that). We have created laws, religious restrictions and fairy tales in an attempt to define it and control female sexual expression. But we haven’t done very much to understand it. Buss and Meston try to shed some light on this enigma in their 2010 book “Why Women Have Sex”. Using a combination of anonymous surveys, lab experiments and multi-discipline research the two psychologists break down sexual motivation from a variety of different angles.

So why do women have sex? The answer is…complicated.

According to Buss and Meston, there are nineteen major motivations for female sexual expression including:

Sensual attractors
Physical pleasure
Social status
Emotional/ spiritual connection
Mate capture/ Mate retention
Mate poaching
Responsibility in relationships
Guilt in relationships
Curiosity
Variety
Mate Evaluation
Barter
Trade
Ego Boost
Deception
Punishment
Abuse
Health benefits
Procreation

In addition to this list, the authors point out that several motivations could be present at the same time in any woman’s sexual choices even if those motivations are in conflict. Another complicating factor is that the motivations could be subconscious and fluid over the course of a sexual act. Finally, the choice of each woman has to be understood in the context of her age, peer group, religion, upbringing and previous sexual history. In other words a person may have no idea why a woman might decide to have sex and the woman herself may not be cognizant of the factors underlying her choices.

I originally decided to read this book to put more authenticity into the sexual motivations of the female characters in my books. For the sake of clarity in my work (and my own sanity) I won’t try and definitively nail down the sexual motivation of any character. But reading this book will add more variety and resonance to their sexual expression and hopefully improve the quality of my writing.


Have fun.
G

P.S. You can read more of my posts at http://bit.ly/OLKC50

Why Women Have Sex: A Book Review

The sexual motivations of women have consumed men since the Middle Ages (and probably earlier than that). We have created laws, religious restrictions and fairy tales in an attempt to define it and control female sexual expression. But we haven’t done very much to understand it. Buss and Meston try to shed some light on this enigma in their 2010 book “Why Women Have Sex”. Using a combination of anonymous surveys, lab experiments and multi-discipline research the two psychologists break down s...

Asset Management and Sharing Secrets is Now on Sale

Sex Lies and Spies is offering two new stories on Amazon today. We are offering one espionage story in Asset Management and one erotic story in Sharing Secrets. Amazon Prime users can download the books for free. If you are in the press, a blogger or a book reviewer & you'd like press copies of my August books please let me know.
Asset Management : ($1.99)Rose Mendoza is an ambitious young executive looking to make her mark at the security firm of RSVP. One of her first projects is get...