Steven Lewis's Blog, page 22

Another way to earn money from self-publishing and writing

The opportunity given to businesses by the new ways of self-publishing is something companies haven’t grasped at all. The tools that allow you and me to publish our books directly to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the iBookstore and other bookstores are just as open to the Corporate Self-Publisher, a company with a message.

The tools we use to self-publish our books are just as available to businesses. Writing and self-publishing is a service you're qualified to offer.

Companies have always written books of course, but those were books they sold direct or gave away to customers, clients and leads. It was next to impossible to get those books into the bookshop around the corner, let alone on the shelves of bookshops internationally. Now a book by any business can sit on the shelves next to those by traditionally published authors.

Business books build credibility, showcase professional expertise, and they persude and influence.

A Hilton Guide to Sydney for Business Travellers could, for instance, sit on the shelves of Amazon next to the Lonely Planet’s guide to Sydney. A Deloitte book on management can sit alongside works by Tom Peters, Stephen R. Covey, Daniel Pink, and the Heath brothers.

You know this already of course, so…

Why am I mentioning this to you?

I know that I’m different from many of you in that I write non-fiction and, as a professional writer and ghostwriter for the last 15 years, I’ve done most of my writing for companies.

As I was saying to Dave Cornford, co-author of the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey, when we met last week to discuss the first draft:

If you want to write, business writing is still writing. It’s not the same as writing a novel or short stories, I grant you, but getting paid to do what you love is better than doing anything else.

I recently started a blog about online marketing and social media for business. I talk there about many of the same things I talk about here but, as someone who trains and consults to companies these things, I wanted somewhere I could discuss them beyond their application to self-publishing.

I’ve published there a white paper called The Corporate Self-Publisher. I wanted to mention it to you because I think there’s an opportunity for all writers who want to further their craft, even if this is a direction you hadn’t considered.

Businesses need good writers more than ever. If you can combine your talent for writing with your expertise in self-publishing, you have a wonderful package to offer.

I’d love your thoughts on the white paper and, if you’re interested in more of my thoughts on online marketing and social media, please do sign up for the mailing list over there. As authors in the 21st century, you’re all in the business of online marketing now!

Visit my online marketing and social media blog to download the white paper

 

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It’s time for a self-publishers’ alliance

The Taleist Self-Publishing Survey, due at the end of May, has some interesting things to say about whether self-publishers should in fact be self-publishing houses. The answers from over 1,000 self-publishers show clearly that those who get the most help do better financially.

Writing might be a one-person endeavour but the “self” in self-publishing doesn’t have to mean “alone”; and, it turns out, it shouldn’t, not if you want to be really successful.

That’s one reason I signed on to be an advisor to the Alliance of Independent Authors, which launches officially at London Book Fair tomorrow. I wish I could be there but there’s a reason I’m the Australasian representative on the advisory board. The Fair brings together 1,500 companies from around the world exhibiting their wares to 24,500 publishing professionals, including the Alliance’s founder, Orna Ross.

The advisory board comprises names familiar to regular readers of this blog — and indeed anyone who has spent any time in the self-publishing community – Joel Friedlander, Joanna Penn, Mark Coker, and Dana Lynn Smith.

I’ve always said — and I’m hardly alone in doing so — that self-publishing is a business and it needs to be treated as such. There’s a symbolism involved in choosing to launch a self-publishing group during one of the world’s most significant publishing business events.

Those able to make the Alliance launch will get to hear writers talking about their experience of going indie, including successes like Linda Gillard, recent converts like New York Times bestseller Joni Rodgers, and current Amazon.uk No 1, Hazel Gaynor. Amazon’s onboard, too: Thom Kephart from Amazon will talk about its policies for self-publishers.

The Alliance isn’t free to join but that, in my opinion, goes to the heart of treating your self-publishing as a business. Nonethelss, it’s a nonprofit, the only one for the self-publishing writer. Orna started it because of her own experiences leaving traditional publishing to try the independent route, so she knows what she’s doing in building an organisation to offer guidance, connection, collaboration, and other benefits to indie authors.

The Alliance will become, as Orna puts it, “an advocate, and campaigning voice, as self-publishing writers are currently unrepresented within the literary and publishing industries — often voiceless, excluded from most other writing organisations on largely spurious grounds, asked to pay for reviews, rarely invited to literary events or conferences.

I hope you’ll join us.

 

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What’s a critical review on Amazon?

Amazon considers a 3-star review a "critical" review

The Easter long weekend was a perfect time to burn through four of my KDP Select free days for my new book, The Ohakune Easter Hunt.

The result was over 100 downloads. This was a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers for two free days for Hot Silver – Riding the Indian Pacific in January. It was, however, a respectable number in a quieter month for book sales and for a title that had only been out for a couple of days and had no reviews.

The most recent review was from food and wine blogger Simon Gianoutsos, who gave it three stars.*

As you can see, Simon compared it to reading Bill Bryson and described it as “an ok read”. I’m not clutching at straws, I recognise that “ok read” isn’t the highest of praise, but it strikes me as odd that Amazon calls this a “critical review”. It isn’t my impression from his review that Simon would see this as an “unfavourable” review. (I’ll be contacting him with a link to this post so he’s welcome to correct me.)

It suits me of course for readers to be presented with a “most helpful critical review” that isn’t really critical.

Simon mentioned in the review that The Ohakune Easter Hunt is short, and I have had some issues with this and reviews in the past, particularly for In-Book Promotion. As I wrote in Why it would be better for some authors to be single:

The problem is that an expectation is created in readers by the word “book”. In the physical world, you wouldn’t hand someone a one-page document and describe it as a book.

The Ohakune Easter Hunt was designed as a 99-cent title. I think it’s worth it, but you can buy a novel for that price, too.

Both Ohakune and In-Book Promotion are carefully described on Amazon as short but I still wish there was an accepted term for an ebook that isn’t a book, so to speak.

I’m open to ideas but what seeing Simon’s review described by Amazon as unfavourable really made me wonder was what you think…

When you give something three stars (out of a possible five) are you giving it a “negative” review?

* I don’t know Simon but I’m giving him the link love because I’m grateful to anyone who takes the time to review books, especially if they do it when they like a book as well as when they don’t, which Simon does.

 

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What's a critical review on Amazon?

Amazon considers a 3-star review a "critical" review

The Easter long weekend was a perfect time to burn through four of my KDP Select free days for my new book, The Ohakune Easter Hunt.

The result was over 100 downloads. This was a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers for two free days for Hot Silver – Riding the Indian Pacific in January. It was, however, a respectable number in a quieter month for book sales and for a title that had only been out for a couple of days and had no reviews.

The most recent review was from food and wine blogger Simon Gianoutsos, who gave it three stars.*

As you can see, Simon compared it to reading Bill Bryson and described it as "an ok read". I'm not clutching at straws, I recognise that "ok read" isn't the highest of praise, but it strikes me as odd that Amazon calls this a "critical review". It isn't my impression from his review that Simon would see this as an "unfavourable" review. (I'll be contacting him with a link to this post so he's welcome to correct me.)

It suits me of course for readers to be presented with a "most helpful critical review" that isn't really critical.

Simon mentioned in the review that The Ohakune Easter Hunt is short, and I have had some issues with this and reviews in the past, particularly for In-Book Promotion. As I wrote in Why it would be better for some authors to be single:

The problem is that an expectation is created in readers by the word "book". In the physical world, you wouldn't hand someone a one-page document and describe it as a book.

The Ohakune Easter Hunt was designed as a 99-cent title. I think it's worth it, but you can buy a novel for that price, too.

Both Ohakune and In-Book Promotion are carefully described on Amazon as short but I still wish there was an accepted term for an ebook that isn't a book, so to speak.

I'm open to ideas but what seeing Simon's review described by Amazon as unfavourable really made me wonder was what you think…

When you give something three stars (out of a possible five) are you giving it a "negative" review?

* I don't know Simon but I'm giving him the link love because I'm grateful to anyone who takes the time to review books, especially if they do it when they like a book as well as when they don't, which Simon does.

 

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Do you have the storyteller’s intelligence?

Glass of rosé, books from Readings in Melbourne

At the end of our drive down the Great Ocean Road and back to Melbourne through country Victoria, we had a bit of time to stop in Readings, Melbourne’s best bookstore. I picked up On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner.

Gardner says of “the writer’s nature” that a novelist needs the storyteller’s intelligence, which is “no less subtle than the mathematician’s or the philosopher’s but not so easily recognised”.

Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller’s is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or obstnacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing ernestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat’s; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.

I read it aloud to my wife, who recognised me in in much of it, which doesn’t mean either of us thinks I’m a great writer, just that we agree I like dirty jokes, rail against religion, and eat too much.

What about you? Does that fit you? Do you agree that these are the qualities of a “storyteller’s intelligence”? What other sorts of “intelligence” do you think a storyteller needs?

New book on Amazon

When men with guns start filling the streets of town, what journalist wouldn’t reach for his paper and pen. That was the situation I found myself in when my visit to Ohakune coincided with the annual Easter hunt. This fascinating town sits at the foot of one of the world’s most active volcanos, and when it blows the locals head for the fireworks with lawn chairs and cans of beer.

The Ohakune Easter Hunt is the newspaper travel article I wrote about an eye-opening day out. (For a short time I felt like a world authority on pig hunting, at least among vegetarians who don’t hunt.)

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Do you have the storyteller's intelligence?

Glass of rosé, books from Readings in Melbourne

At the end of our drive down the Great Ocean Road and back to Melbourne through country Victoria, we had a bit of time to stop in Readings, Melbourne's best bookstore. I picked up On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner.

Gardner says of "the writer's nature" that a novelist needs the storyteller's intelligence, which is "no less subtle than the mathematician's or the philosopher's but not so easily recognised".

Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or obstnacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing ernestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.

I read it aloud to my wife, who recognised me in in much of it, which doesn't mean either of us thinks I'm a great writer, just that we agree I like dirty jokes, rail against religion, and eat too much.

What about you? Does that fit you? Do you agree that these are the qualities of a "storyteller's intelligence"? What other sorts of "intelligence" do you think a storyteller needs?

New book on Amazon

When men with guns start filling the streets of town, what journalist wouldn't reach for his paper and pen. That was the situation I found myself in when my visit to Ohakune coincided with the annual Easter hunt. This fascinating town sits at the foot of one of the world's most active volcanos, and when it blows the locals head for the fireworks with lawn chairs and cans of beer.

The Ohakune Easter Hunt is the newspaper travel article I wrote about an eye-opening day out. (For a short time I felt like a world authority on pig hunting, at least among vegetarians who don't hunt.)

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What you can learn from Richard Branson’s one-track mind

This post announced the publication of How to Write Perfect Press Releases.

Richard Branson is only ever thinking about one thing

Richard Branson won’t wear a tie. This major news story was broken by Vanessa Wong in Bloomberg Businessweek‘s travel section under the modest headline Why Richard Branson Won’t Wear a Tie. I won’t wear a tie either, but that’s not the point of this post about ebook promotion.

The point is Richard Branson’s one-track mind.

Wong asked Branson whether travel for him involves any guilty pleasures. He said:

“I live on a tiny little island in the Caribbean, Necker Island. When I am there, I keep fit. I kite surf, I surf, I play tennis, I swim. I am really active. When I am traveling, I am horribly inactive and working ridiculous hours. I definitely need to spend time on Necker to recuperate from all the traveling. I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort. But the food is pretty good, so that’s not so good [for diet]. [When I travel] I like sticky, jiggly puddings and apple crumbles and lots of unhealthy, nice things. But then my fitness regime is back at home.”

Do you see what he did there? He gave a charming answer, even managing to make his ownership of a Caribbean island sound no different from you and me owning a house (after all, it’s only a “tiny” island).

But it wasn’t the charm that would have made his public relations team’s hearts sing with joy.

He could have said, “I like to eat when I’m travelling” but he didn’t. He reminded everyone that it’s easy to travel with Virgin because they fly to lots of places; that they’re comfortable; and the food its good, too.

The beautiful thing from a PR point of view was…
Shameless plug #1
I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort.”
Shameless plug #2:
But the food is pretty good, so that’s not so good [for diet].

All Wong had asked Branson was if he had any guilty pleasures when travelling. He answered the question but not without slipping in two blatant plugs in nine sentences.

When Branson is talking to a journalist he’s got his mind on one thing: promoting the brand. Every question he’s asked is an opportunity to reinforce the Virgin brand.

Do you have a one-track mind?

If I asked you about your guilty pleasures when travelling could you shoehorn in some ebook promotion?

If you want to be good at media relations, you need to be good with “key messages”.

When you’re promoting your book, your business, yourself, you need to decide on your “key messages” — the pieces of information that are most crucial you get across. If you’re interacting with someone in a promotional context, you need to ask yourself:

What do I most want this person to know about me or my service?

There should be no more than three things on that list. You can’t expect in a brief interaction to convey too much detail in promotion of yourself or your business or your ebook, so you have to keep it to what is most important.

If I’m asked about Taleist, for instance, I say that it’s a site that helps writers become self-published authors; and that:

I am a professional writer and ghostwriter;
I offer training in self-publishing, social media and online marketing.

In a media interview you might have to repeat those things more than seems natural, working the promotion into the conversation.

“Interesting you should ask that, Vanessa. In five years of running social media seminars in Australia, I’ve learned…”

It might well sound unnatural, but you don’t know which snippets the journalist is going to use to illustrate her story. For all we know Branson spoke to Wong for half an hour. If he did, you can bet he found 15 different ways to talk about how many flights Virgin has and how comfortable they are.

You can’t slip your ebook promotion into the first five minutes then relax for the next 25. Finding a balance between answering a question and getting across a key message takes practice so don’t start talking to the media until you’ve nailed it.

There’s no point seeing an article about yourself in a newspaper if it doesn’t do anything for you.

You, too, can be a media star with How to Write Perfect Press Releases

A key message of my own

There’s a whole lot more information about how to get media attention for yourself in my book How to Write Perfect Press Releases. If you work through the steps in the book for putting together a media release, you’ll identify your key messages along the way and learn how to have a mutually beneficial exchange with the media.

 

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What you can learn from Richard Branson's one-track mind

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For the next three days only you can get a free review copy of How to Write Perfect Press Releases. Click the link to find out how.

Richard Branson is only ever thinking about one thing

Richard Branson won't wear a tie. This major news story was broken by Vanessa Wong in Bloomberg Businessweek's travel section under the modest headline Why Richard Branson Won't Wear a Tie. I won't wear a tie either, but that's not the point of this post about ebook promotion.

The point is Richard Branson's one-track mind.

Wong asked Branson whether travel for him involves any guilty pleasures. He said:

"I live on a tiny little island in the Caribbean, Necker Island. When I am there, I keep fit. I kite surf, I surf, I play tennis, I swim. I am really active. When I am traveling, I am horribly inactive and working ridiculous hours. I definitely need to spend time on Necker to recuperate from all the traveling. I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort. But the food is pretty good, so that's not so good [for diet]. [When I travel] I like sticky, jiggly puddings and apple crumbles and lots of unhealthy, nice things. But then my fitness regime is back at home."

Do you see what he did there? He gave a charming answer, even managing to make his ownership of a Caribbean island sound no different from you and me owning a house (after all, it's only a "tiny" island).

But it wasn't the charm that would have made his public relations team's hearts sing with joy.

He could have said, "I like to eat when I'm travelling" but he didn't. He reminded everyone that it's easy to travel with Virgin because they fly to lots of places; that they're comfortable; and the food its good, too.

The beautiful thing from a PR point of view was…
Shameless plug #1
I am fortunate that Virgin planes now fly all around the world, so at least I can fly in comfort."
Shameless plug #2:
But the food is pretty good, so that's not so good [for diet].

All Wong had asked Branson was if he had any guilty pleasures when travelling. He answered the question but not without slipping in two blatant plugs in nine sentences.

When Branson is talking to a journalist he's got his mind on one thing: promoting the brand. Every question he's asked is an opportunity to reinforce the Virgin brand.

Do you have a one-track mind?

If I asked you about your guilty pleasures when travelling could you shoehorn in some ebook promotion?

If you want to be good at media relations, you need to be good with "key messages".

When you're promoting your book, your business, yourself, you need to decide on your "key messages" — the pieces of information that are most crucial you get across. If you're interacting with someone in a promotional context, you need to ask yourself:

What do I most want this person to know about me or my service?

There should be no more than three things on that list. You can't expect in a brief interaction to convey too much detail in promotion of yourself or your business or your ebook, so you have to keep it to what is most important.

If I'm asked about Taleist, for instance, I say that it's a site that helps writers become self-published authors; and that:

I am a professional writer and ghostwriter;
I offer training in self-publishing, social media and online marketing.

In a media interview you might have to repeat those things more than seems natural, working the promotion into the conversation.

"Interesting you should ask that, Vanessa. In five years of running social media seminars in Australia, I've learned…"

It might well sound unnatural, but you don't know which snippets the journalist is going to use to illustrate her story. For all we know Branson spoke to Wong for half an hour. If he did, you can bet he found 15 different ways to talk about how many flights Virgin has and how comfortable they are.

You can't slip your ebook promotion into the first five minutes then relax for the next 25. Finding a balance between answering a question and getting across a key message takes practice so don't start talking to the media until you've nailed it.

There's no point seeing an article about yourself in a newspaper if it doesn't do anything for you.

You, too, can be a media star with How to Write Perfect Press Releases

A key message of my own

There's a whole lot more information about how to get media attention for yourself in my book How to Write Perfect Press Releases. If you work through the steps in the book for putting together a media release, you'll identify your key messages along the way and learn how to have a mutually beneficial exchange with the media.

For the next three days only you can get a free review copy of How to Write Perfect Press Releases. Click the link to find out how.

 

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The highest-earning self-publishers take 24% more time per word

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The highest-earning self-publishing authors write 31% more words per day than their less successful self-published colleagues, but they spend 62% more time doing it. This translates to spending 24% more time per word. — data from the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey

Just some of the data from one of the chapters in the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey

This is just one of the fascinating insights that has come out as Dave Cornford and I work our way through the data collected in the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey.

As you can see, we're drawing on the answers to multiple questions in the survey to pull out "stories" from the data 1,007 authors gave us.

The survey comprised 61 questions. If we were just going to give you the straight answers to each question, we could have hit "print" almost immediately and sent you raw data, like an online poll. But we're not going to do that.

We didn't, for instance, ask authors how long they spend writing each word to come up with the data above. That insight came from looking at separate answers in the survey relating to:

Royalties data
Words written per day information
How much time authors spend writing

And splitting looking at the difference between the answers from authors earning in the top 10% and those who weren't.

The cards spread over Dave's kitchen table in the picture above represent just some of the data that will go into one of the chapters of the report — in this case the one about what top-earning self-publishing authors have in common.

Having sat down for several half-day sessions now, we've got a clearer idea of how long it's going to take to decide what stories we're going to flesh out and how we need to interrogate the data.

Putting all that together has allowed us to do decide to aim for publication at the end of May. I can promise you that it'll have been worth the wait!

If you joined the mailing list after completing the survey, you'll be notified as soon as the report is published. Otherwise, join the Taleist mailing list now to make sure you're the first to know.

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Should I comment on my Amazon reviews?

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Everyone has a right to an opinion but what about errors of fact, especially when they might put people off reading your books?

"… pathlogically self regardng, metropolitan, superscilious, geek…" [sic] — by "Rail Traveller"

Everyone has a right to an opinion but what about errors of fact?

This describes me, according to a reviewer on Amazon.co.uk, reviewing Hot Silver, my book about riding the Indian Pacific.

I can take it, I've been called worse.

No licence to review; thick skin required

Just as I don't need a licence to self-publish my work on Amazon, readers don't need a licence to write a review either.

If you're going to get into this game, you need a thick skin.

As Mark LaFlamme, crime reporter and novelist, said to me about this particular review:

You can take your absolute favorite book – something you regard as near perfect – and take a look at the reviews. You'll find some rough comments, like this one and worse, and take comfort in it. Nobody escapes it. If Shakespeare himself blew back from beyond and started writing again, somebody would eventually bash him but good.

So what's the problem?


Hot Silver has a four-star average from 29 reviews in the US and the UK
Sales in Amazon.co.uk have risen substantially since Rail Traveller called me names



I can take being called names or people not enjoying the book (even if it stings). These are matters of opinion and everyone is entitled to their own.
What grinds my gears is when reviewers get the facts wrong and might mislead potential readers with their untruths.

Rail Traveller thinks I'm an ass, which is okay, but he also tells anyone reading his review that the book is:

"a magazine 'travel feature' [I wrote] for the competition – Virgin – so not serious".

This isn't opinion, it's a statement of fact, and he's wrong. I did make a feature for an airline, although it was an audio feature, not a magazine feature. That's trivial of course. What pisses me off is the use of incorrect assertions to support an implication that I bagged the Indian Pacific because I was writing for a competitor.

V Australia (part of the Virgin family of airlines) is a budget international airline, hardly a competitor to a (supposedly) luxurious overland rail service across Australia
Hot Silver is not what went onboard the plane. The audio feature was entirely complimentary about the Indian Pacific! (It's available from Audible for less than $1, if you want to hear for yourself.) I didn't say anything untrue, I just left out all the bits that make Hot Silver a humourous read but that wouldn't have been suitable for an airline feature.

Viruses on your Kindle? WTF?

I also have a book called Kindle for Newspapers, Magazines and Blogs about how to get free newspapers on your Kindle automatically. The book involves setting up your computer to do a few things cleverly then email the downloaded newspapers to you.

"What about possible hacking which can spread a virus to your Kindle?" says "Julia d." in a three-star review.

Say what now? There are people hacking our computers to get to our Kindles? What would they get for their trouble? A free read of your books? The chance to re-write sections of books they don't like?

"I had to wonder why anyone would give out or even suggest to give their email password to a computer system," says Julia d.

Um, how do you get your emails, Julia?

This is arrant nonsense but there are plenty of people who don't know enough about computers to know that Julia is jumping at shadows when she thinks the Russians are after her Kindle.

Someone who just wants a few free newspapers on his or her Kindle — and could have them for the price of my book — might be scared off by Julia d.'s review.
Should I say something?

Amazon gives everyone the right to comment on someone's review. I could, therefore, come in and politely illuminate the factual errors with a comment, giving the statements of opinion a wide berth. (And I would be very polite because I don't want this to happen.)

Both Julia d. and Rail Traveller's reviews were left weeks ago. I haven't commented and I have no intention of doing so.

Why I don't say anything

My books' pages on Amazon aren't my pages, and readers don't go there to find me. In my opinion readers should be able to browse a bookshop without bumping into authors fussing and preening next to their books; thanking kind reviewers and gently pointing out errors in less good reviews.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about my decision in the case of the factual errors. I'd hate to think someone wasn't reading my book because they read something untrue.

What do you think?
What's your opinion. Have you ever commented on a review on Amazon (of your own book or someone else's)? Would you? Under what circumstances? Have you seen anyone do it?

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