Tim McGregor's Blog, page 3

Happy Valentine's Day... your book sucks! (Or How to deal with negative reviews)

This Valentine’s Day, cupid nailed my heart with a bad review that actually got under my skin. I’ve had bad reviews before but these never really bothered me. Working in film toughened my hide from such things and I prided myself on my ability to shrug off scathing remarks and harsh criticisms. It’s all part of the business. If you release work into the world, whether it’s a book or a film or whatever, then the world is entitled to its opinion of it. And their opinions, even the mean-spirited ones, aren’t wrong.
Pride goes before a fall, as they say, and I found myself bristling at the review that popped up this February 14th. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to walk away and do nothing about it.
Because the truth is, you can never respond to a negative review without coming off like a poor sport. No matter how witty your response or intelligent your counter-argument may be, you the writer, will come across as a crybaby who can’t take the heat. Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Joseph Heller... hell, even Shakespeare sounded like a pouty spoilsport when he complained about his critics. It’s simply a fight you can’t win in the moment. We’ve all seen those jaw-dropping flameouts when an author engages the critic to his/her eternal embarrassment. You don’t want to go there.
The only response is utter silence. If your work is good, you will win in the end because readers will keep finding your book and another old adage comes into play; living well is the best revenge.
But here’s a little secret to temper that scathing review and irksome little one-star rating they left you. Poor reviews, at least on Amazon and other bookselling sites, don’t really matter all that much. Neither do the really good reviews. Well, they don’t hurt but when it comes to reviews, quantity wins out over quality.
It’s validation, plain and simple. That little bracketed number next to your book title that displays the quantity of reviews is more important than the quality of the reviews it represents.
Why?
Because it shows how many times your work has been bought and reviewed. It was validated that number of times by readers who, not only bought and read your book, but took the time to write a few words about it. The higher the number, the more times it’s been validated by readers with their cash and their time.
Take your typical Amazon customer, browsing through the books looking for something good to read. Two books have caught their eye; yours and mine. Both have interesting covers and compelling descriptions that match this reader’s tastes. What’s the deciding factor in choosing your book over mine? The number of reviews it has. That little number tells the potential reader that your book has been validated by that many previous readers. If your book has 50 reviews and mine has only 6, well that’s an easy choice to make, isn't it? 50 people read your book and took the time to say something about it. The measly six reviews of my book means that it’s still an unknown quantity and your book is the safer bet.
In most things, quality always better than sheer quantity but not here. The next time someone rips your book with a poor rating and scorching review, step away and know that the uptick in the numerical value in little brackets beside your title just helped validate the book it scorched.
You win. 

Is there ever a good reason NOT to post a picture of Debb...

Is there ever a good reason NOT to post a picture of Debbie Harry?
Nope.

Sequel roaring out of the gates

Apparently pneumonia isn't necessarily lethal so I'm still here. Yay me. However I have ruined my eyesight fiddling and tweaking the formatting on this new book so many times.

No matter, bad lungs and shriveled corneas be damned... the sequel to Bad Wolf is finally done and will be released TUESDAY! Just in time for Christmas.

Of course I couldn't let it go without overthinking the book cover again so.... this is the cover at the moment.





Now, time to bake Christmas cookies!

Pale Wolf preview

Is it December already? Jesus H!

While I deteriorate under a miasma of plague, the sequel to Bad Wolf is being hammered and polished in time for Christmas. So of course that means more shenanigans with book covers! Oh frikking joy.

So here's what I got so far. Still needs some tweaking but I think it's there. I swear to God, one day I will have enough discretionary funds to pay a professional to do this.

Now back to the plague hut for me. Send crates of lager and cans of DDT.

Kindle giveaway

Bad Wolf is free on Amazon today and tomorrow, so if you haven't got a copy, now's the time to nab one.

Thanks to Michael and crew at Five Free Kindle Books and Tips for promoting the giveaway. If you're looking for current freebies or tips on finding ebooks in your genre, this site makes it easy.

BOOK TITLES - Your hook in the eye of marketing

'Snakes on a whaaat? Where do I motherfucking sign?'

Author Richard Ford was on CBC’s The Next Chapter recently discussing how his publishers wanted him to change the title of his latest book, Canada . The publisher’s suggestion for a new title? 
Saskatchewan
I guess they thought Canada was just too broad for a title but winnowing it down to a single province would improve the book’s chances of finding an audience. 
I’ve been thinking about titles recently and this little story was more grist for the mill. Aside from the laughs, there’s something important here about choosing the right title for your book. 
Aside from the distilled essence of your tale, the title is your first marketing tool.
Crass and crude, I know. ‘But’, protests the young scribe (the one in the back smoking Gitanes), ‘the title is sacred, how dare you denigrate it to the level of a barking salesman.’
Because it is your pitch. Your title is one of the few tangible tools you have to catch the eyeballs of a potential reader. 
Let's face it, there are a few concrete tools you have to give your book a fighting chance. First and foremost is simply writing the best book you can. If your self-publishing, you also have the title and the book cover. 
A compelling professional-looking cover is probably your greatest tool to attract potential readers but unless you’re an accomplished artist, you’ll need help with that.
That leaves you with your title, which often gets overlooked as a hook for an audience. Finding the right title to capture the essence of your story is tough as hell but it’s only one part of your title's purpose. It needs to accomplish two other key goals:
1) It hints at the genre
2) It states what it is
Imagine readers perusing titles without the covers or any information about the book. Could they discern the genre from the title alone? Would they get some glimpse into what the story’s about? Or would your spy thriller be mistaken for a YA romance? Could your literary fiction be mistaken for yet another vampire book? 
See what I mean?   
Remember that movie Snakes on a Plane? That was the epitome of the perfect title. I know you’re rolling your eyes or clicking off somewhere else by now but that title transmitted everything you needed to know about it. It screamed exactly what the story was and relayed the genre. Simplistic to the point of artistry, people buzzed and blogged about that title a full year before the movie came out. Samuel Jackson signed up, script unseen, on the strength of that title alone. 
Want to know one of the worst titles ever?  

Atonement
I don’t mean to single out Ian McEwan but that title is a repellent to readers. I’ve heard it’s a great book and a half-decent movie but I’ll never know because I’ll never read it. The title screams ‘bore, chore and pretension’. 
Why? Because ‘atonement’ is not a title, it’s a theme. And you never want to mistake your theme for your title. 
It is reader-repellent. It gives absolutely no hint to what the story is about, nor a clue to what genre it is. Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is another example. If you saw that title by itself without knowing the author or seeing the cover, would you pick it up? Hell no. It sounds blechhh. On the flipside, how about this title: Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach
Grabs your attention, doesn’t it? You can guess pretty accurately that it’s not only a mystery but one with some cheeky humour to boot. I haven’t read Colin Cotterill’s book but it’s on my list now. It’s a show-stopper of a title. 
Lionel Shriver is an author who cuts both ways. We Need to Talk about Kevin is a title that stands out because of its specificity but by itself, it can be misleading. Without any other info, the title could be mistaken for a touching, warm yarn about parenthood and not the brilliantly unnerving horrorshow that it is. But it stands out. After reading that, a friend loaned me another of Shriver’s books. I liked that one a lot too but I can’t ever recommend it. Know why? Because I can never remember the title of the damn book. ‘That’s all there is’? No, that’s not it...  Is that it? No, wait... 
So Much for That
Granted, it suits the story but as a title it’s bland and forgetful. I would love to recommend it to friends and family if only I could remember what the hell it was called.

In case you’re wondering, I claim no practical expertise in this matter. I used to think Bad Wolf was a good title. While it might convey the genre, it could also be misconstrued as a spy thriller or a Twilight rip-off. A failing grade there but I’m stuck with it now. 
The takeaway here is that while the title should encapsulate your story, it first has to grab a reader's attention and lure them in for a closer look.
Imagine your potential reader walking into their local bookstore or perusing online for their next great read. Is your title strong enough to tear their attention away from the stacks of Stephen King and James Pattison and those Fifty Shades books? 
Your title is a tool. You gotta hook ‘em before you can reel ‘em in.   

Summer - time for reading and bludgeoning homeless prowlers

End of July and the heatwave that has turned this city into a fetid swamp seems to have broken for the moment. Our front lawn is a beautiful shade of light brown, which may be unsightly but hell, it also means I don't have to mow the bastard.

I like these slow summer days. Going to the park with the kids or just watching them run through the sprinkler in our lame attempts to keep it green. Picnics and cloudbusting, that's what the season is all about. And, of course, laying traps to ensnare the strange nocturnal people who prowl my backyard, that's fun too. I almost caught one the other night but the grimy bastard chewed his own leg off and left it behind in the jaws of the bear trap.

Summer is also a great time for books. For me, this is a Harry Potter kind of summer. Having ignored the worldwide phenomena this long, I've been sucked into it by sheer cultural force. I noticed my kids playing Harry Potter with their friends at school. Now, my wife and I had never read the books to them nor had they seen the movies but still, our girls knew the names Harry, Ron and Hermione, running through the schoolyard and waving imaginary wands.

So we've started watching the movies, which is great fun for family movie night. It's not easy finding a movie that we can all sit down and enjoy. E.T was a good choice (although we were all balling by the third act turn) but Star Wars seemed to bore everyone but me. So the Boy Who Lived makes for a great family flick, plus there's seven of the damn things to keep us going. Meanwhile, I'm devouring the book series.

Most of my summer is devoted to writing the sequel to Bad Wolf, with a few interruptions. One of which was an idea for a short story that just wouldn't go away until it was put down on paper. Now that that is squared away, back to work.

This will be available at the usual haunts (Amazon, Kobo) in a day or two, so that's one more detail for me to obsess over. We now resume your usual programming, enjoy your summer.

A year is too long

Between books, that is. The new book, Killing Down the Roman Line, is finally done and available on Amazon. It’s been just over a year since I released my first book, Bad Wolf.

That’s simply too long a span between books. 
For traditional publishing, it isn’t too long of course. One year was roughly the time span between the hardcover release and the paperback. Publishers don’t want to cannibalize their own sales by releasing titles by the same author too close together. One year was traditionally the span between record releases by bands too. Same logic applying, milk every last drop out of the current work and let the audience (if there is one) clamour for more before putting out something new. 
As a business model, that used to make sense, but I don’t think it really works anymore. Not in this atmosphere where everything is sped up and instant gratification is the game of the day. 
The choice of entertainments now are bewildering, the clamour for our attention overwhelming. Amid all the blockbuster movies, must-see-TV and the bottomless time-suck of the internet, who has time for something as slow and solitary as reading a book? 
As the months ticked by and the new book still wasn’t finished, I fretted over losing any momentum I’d gained. I worried that any readers who liked the first book would be long gone by the time the new book came out and I’d be crushed flat under the shear volume of pop culture grinding along. 
I think I fretted needlessly. I’ve heard Joe Konrath say a million times that ebooks are forever and books don’t really compete with one another. The new book will not be pulled from any shelf to make room for the next James Patterson thriller. Readers who are devouring the latest Ken Bruen or George Pelecanos right now may find my humble book down the road. 
Every book has a slow climb to finding eyeballs. This one will be no different, so here it is. 


This is a revenge thriller inspired by one of the most famous true crimes in Canuck history; the massacre of the Black Donnellys.

Bad Wolf is free on Amazon for the next two days. If you ...

Bad Wolf is free on Amazon for the next two days. If you haven't yet, please grab a copy. Clink the book cover on your right.

Like a lot of writers, I was initially wary of the KDP Select program but I decided to take the plunge. The first free day promo I ran, over 5000 people downloaded the book. That blew me away.

I think it was Cory Doctorow who said "Piracy isn't the problem, obscurity is". That pretty much nails the truth to the wall. Offering your book free for a day or two really pushes your little piece of fiction up into the sunlight where readers can see it.

Thanks to Free Kindle Books and Tips for promoting the free run. Hopefully even more readers will see that post and get a copy.

Happy weekend!

Help me choose a book cover

More shenanigans with book covers. The good news is that I found a fantastic image thanks to a talented shutterbug named Max Jänicke(check out his work at rawimage).

The bad news is that I've spent so much time fussing and dickering with this that I can't see straight anymore, let alone objectively decide which one works better.

So, what do you think? If you saw this on a book shelf, which one cover would entice you to pick it up?


                 A                                                                                 B