Aimee Easterling's Blog, page 34

September 2, 2014

Burgling the Dragon is now available for preorder!

Burgling the Dragon"So,"
my father asked me when I sent him my last manuscript to look over,
"whatever happened to all of those novels you wrote back before you
started putting books up on Amazon?"



What happened to
them?  They migrated from computer to computer as I upgraded my
workspace, and are currently sitting on my hard drive.  One of Shiftless's reviewers wrote something along the lines of, "This is awfully good for a first novel," but what they didn't realize is that Shiftless is approximately my sixth finished novel, not my first.



After a few more pokes
from my father, I looked back at the previous stories I'd written and
saw that, yes, many of them were terrible.  However, the fourth
novel was actually quite fun (especially since I'd written the book so
long ago that I didn't recall what was going to happen next as I
reread).  Start with two strong heroines, both of whom are deeply
flawed (of course) but who grow over the course of their
adventures.  Add in an accidental curse, a reluctant knight, and a
lot of mud, and you've got a swords-and-sorcery fantastical adventure
that will appeal to fans of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.



I polished Burgling the Dragon
until the writing meets my current standards (then sent it off to the
copy editor to clean up anything I missed), and the book is now
available for preorder on Amazon!  I'll tell you up front that
there is no love story involved --- I considered adding one in, but
decided to stick to the middle-readers (with adult appeal) age bracket
of the novel as originally written.  So, if you feel like a book is
empty without a bit of sparkin', you might want to give this one a
miss.



If I haven't scared you away yet, now's your chance to snap up Burgling the Dragon at the preorder price of 99 cents
Once the book goes live, I plan to raise the price tag, so best splurge
a buck now while it's cheap.  Thanks for reading, and I hope
you'll enjoy meeting Nat and Thorn!

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Published on September 02, 2014 12:43

August 29, 2014

Flight of the Billionaire's Sister

Flight of the Billionaire's SisterI know I promised my loyal fans a sequel to Shiftless this summer if they were kind enough to write reviews.  And you were very kind!  So where's the sequel?



Well, Trouble turned out
to live up to her name.  I was getting bogged down in my second
werewolf novel when my husband came home from the grocery store with a
story that just itched to be turned into a billionaire romance. 
(Crazy subgenre name, I know.)  And then, as I wrote the beginning
of the billionaire romance, one of the secondary characters asked for a
short story of her own.  She was adamant.  I couldn't turn her
down.



Flight of the Billionaire's Sister
is a short (roughly twenty book-pages) jaunt in the life of a teenager
who finds Swiss boarding school less enticing than she'd thought. 
There are mean girls, sweet boys, and an uplifting
young-adult/chick-lit-style journey.  If you're intrigued, you can
preorder the story now for 99 cents, you can wait until September 12
when the book will be available for free borrowing if you subscribe to
Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime, or you can email me
now for a free copy.  That's right --- I'll send a free pdf copy
to the first five readers who contact me and promise to get the story
read in time to write a review on Amazon on launch day.



In the meantime, I have
another exciting announcement coming up in a month or so.  Amazon
helped me team up with a very excellent narrator who is currently
turning Shiftless into an audio book.  She has already finished the
first chapter and it's outstanding so far.  Stay tuned for more
details!

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Published on August 29, 2014 07:40

August 14, 2014

The Kindle Unlimited gamble

Kindle Unlimited




When Kindle Unlimited was unveiled a month ago,
indie authors were all abuzz.  Some authors thought KU was the end
of life as we knew it, while other authors thought that KU was going to
make them a mint of cash.  Who was right?




Borrow estimate




Hypothesis 1:
Amazon will let the amount of income per borrow decline now that
they're paying authors for a lot more borrows as a result of the Kindle
Unlimited program.  Specifically, I crunched some numbers at the
beginning of August and figured that, if my borrows make up a similar
proportion of the overall pool in July as in June, authors would be
bringing in $1.03 per borrow in July rather than about $2 per borrow in
June.



Conclusion 1:
This would have been the case had Amazon not drastically increased the
fund they allot to paying authors whose books are borrowed.  They
first brought the pool up to $2 million when announcing Kindle Unlimited
in July, then retroactively increasing the pool by another $785,000
this month.  The upshot is that authors who weren't afraid to leave
their books in the lending library did
see a slight decline in income per borrow (down to $1.80), but they
also saw overall income increases due to the much larger than usual
number of borrows.  For example, Wetknee books were borrowed 400
times in July, an increase of 236%.




Kindle Unlimited sales




Hypothesis 2:
Borrows will parasitize paid sales, so even if borrow income is high as
a result of Kindle Unlimited, overall author earnings will stay steady
or decline.



Conclusion 2:
The number of Wetknee Books sold (as opposed to borrowed) declined by
13% between June and July.  However, with the increased borrow
income, overall revenue increased by 20%.  This increase in revenue
is due partially to our low book prices, though, which means that
borrows actually pay out more money than sales for most of our
titles.  I'd be curious to hear from other authors with
higher-priced books to see if their overall income increased, declined,
or stayed the same as a result of Kindle Unlimited.



Caveats: Amazon released a statement today saying that they reported and paid authors based on number of borrowed books opened
in July, rather than number of borrowed books read to 10%.  So,
the results when Amazon sticks to their actual rules may be quite
different for August than they were during this initial month.  In
addition, who's to say how many readers will pay for their subscription
to continue now that the free trial period is over?



Overall,
I suspect that participating in KDP will continue to be in an author's
best interest now that Kindle Unlimited has been unveiled, despite the
requirement of remaining exclusive to Amazon.  Yes, 35% of ebooks
are currently sold on platforms other than Amazon, but KDP authors
continue to get enough perks that increased Amazon sales make up for
that lost revenue.  And participating in the KU library appears to
be a perk, not a bug, perhaps enough to make me reenroll books in the
program that I had taken out due to lack of impact from free book
promotions.

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Published on August 14, 2014 15:41

August 10, 2014

July 2014: Kindle Unlimited favorite books

The Chocolate Touch by FlorandI subscribed to the free trial of Kindle Unlimited
this month, and as I result I got to enjoy a lot of books I would have
otherwise been forced to pay for.  Here are my top picks from the
600,000 books currently available for "free" reads as part of that
program.



A slew of books by Laura Florand

--- I'm not going to list them all, but Florand has five titles
enrolled in KU (plus one that's perma-free) and all are excellent. 
Gourmet chocolate, French culture, and true romance make each of these
books a pure delight.



A slew of books by Bev Pettersen
--- I've glowed about this author's horse-related romantic suspense
before, so I'll just add that seven of her books are enrolled in KU and I
enjoyed all of them. 



Midsummer Moon
by Laura Kinsale --- This book is supposedly a regency romance, but it
feels much deeper than average (while still being a fun, engrossing
read).  The hedgehog is a perfect touch.



It's in His Kiss
by Katie and Bria Quinn --- This is a funny and delightful short story
that will hit the spot for all readers who spend too much time with
their nose in a book and too little time in the real world.



The Governess Affair by Courney Milan --- This regency romance is perma-free but, unfortunately, the sequels have to be paid for.



Lord and Lady Spy by Shannon Galen --- This fun romp reads like Gallagher Girls for grownups (if they went back in time two hundred years).



Finding Infinity
by Susan Kiernan-Lewis --- This piece of chick-lit is all about how
hard it is for an outsider to move into a small town, with a side of
romance and cupcakes.



So what do I think of KU
three weeks later?  From a writer's perspective, I suspect my
income will initially go up (although I also suspect that authors will
get paid around $1 per borrow instead of the previous $2 per borrow ---
more on that in about a week once sales data is available). 
However, as a reader, I find it too hard to hunt down quality books
using the program, so I'll be canceling my subscription before the free
trial ends.  Having read all of the enrolled books by indie authors
I've loved in the past, it's time to go back to the free lists to hunt
more authors who can feed my voracious appetite.

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Published on August 10, 2014 16:24

August 9, 2014

Authors are not united against Amazon

Hatchette vs. AmazonMany
of you are probably blissfully ignorant of the drama that's been
ripping through the literary world over the last few months.  If
you have heard about the dispute, chances are you've read a story like this New York Times article
that is strongly slanted toward the big publishing houses and
best-selling authors.  Many readers make the assumption that what's
good for Stephen King is good for all readers and writers...but that
assumption is wrong.



The top 1% of writers are
indeed aided by Hachette's practices to collude with retailers to force
ebook prices to stay high.  However, the other 99% of authors who
lack the clout to have their print books shown in supermarket aisles
have been aware for years that we not only sell more books, we also make
more money, if ebook prices are low.



From a publisher's
standpoint, it makes sense to charge more for ebooks since that practice
makes print books seem more valuable as well.  In our modern
climate, the only real value a publisher brings to the table is to print
books at a low cost and to distribute them widely --- every other
service provided by publishers can be outsourced by authors at a flat
fee rather than by giving away a cut of the royalties.  So, even
though authors, Amazon, and even publishers
make less money on digital sales when ebook prices are high, publishers
are intent on maintaining those high prices to support their waning
paper market and to protect the status quo.



Let's be fair --- Amazon
is also looking out for their bottom line.  The huge online
retailer wants ebook prices to be held below $9.99 because Anazon makes
more money that way.  But the truth is that the reader also spends
less money when ebook prices are lower and 99% of authors also make more
money.  Only the publisher loses out by becoming less essential as
the middleman between these two core groups.



The reason I'm writing
this post is because a few big-name authors have banded together to put
up $104,000 to buy an ad in the New York Times.  Predictably, the
mainstream press is also parroting the point of view of the top
1%.  Meanwhile, the other side of the argument hasn't been
represented in the media. 



Amazon has put together a succinct and thoughtful analysis of the situation here
and is asking readers and writers to email Hatchette to state our
disapproval.  And now I'm asking you to join in the email
surge.  Because, in this case, what's good for Amazon is good for
readers and for 99% of writers, so we need to make our stance
known.  Perhaps if so many emails hit Hatchette's inbox that their
server crashes, that news might be reported by the mainstream press?

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Published on August 09, 2014 05:05

August 1, 2014

KDP pricing support

KDP pricing support




Indie authors will be
interested in Amazon's new feature, KDP Pricing Support, which helps
authors choose the most lucrative price point for their ebook. 
Amazon bases their recommendation on each book's category, customer
reviews, ratings, past sales, best-seller rank and page count, using
past data to estimate how many books you'd sell if you raised or lowered
your book's price.  They don't
seem to factor in delivery costs, though, so if your books are
picture-heavy like mine, you'll need to do a bit of extra math to see if
Amazon's suggestions hold water.



To see what Amazon thinks
the best price for your book would be, go into your Bookshelf on KDP,
click on "Edit rights, royalty, and pricing," then click "view service"
under the Step 8 KDP Pricing Support (Beta) section.  You'll get a
graph like the one shown at the top of this post, with Amazon's estimate
for your earnings and the number of books sold at various price points.



In the past, my strategy
with ebooks has been to price very low so that more readers can access
my books, driving the titles up the best-seller lists and garnering lots
of new readers.  So it's no surprise that Amazon thinks I should
charge more, figuring that the increase in revenue per book will
overcome the lower number of books sold.



Although I'm a bit
dubious, I tentatively chose to take their advice for our most popular
titles, raising the price of every book significantly.  I'll be
keeping a close eye on my sales, though, and will lower prices as
necessary if I feel like I'm losing momentum (or getting bad reviews) by
pricing books at a higher point.  I'll also try to remember to
post an update in a month or so analyzing how the higher prices affected
ebook sales and revenue so you know whether to follow suit.  Feel
free to chime in with a comment if you've also tried Amazon's new
feature and loved it or hated it.

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Published on August 01, 2014 12:31

July 19, 2014

Kindle Unlimited from a reader's and writer's perspective

Kindle Unlimited buy box




This past week, Amazon rolled out Kindle Unlimited
At first glance, it looks like a reader's dream come true --- for $9.99
per month, you can read any ebook you want for free.  On the other
hand, many indie writers are running scared, wondering why anyone would
buy their books if the works can now be downloaded for free.  It
turns out that neither analysis is quite right.  I did some poking
from the author's perspective and signed up for the free trial as a
reader, and here are my early thoughts on the program.



A reader's perspective

Kindle Unlimited notationAs
a reader, I suspect I'll cancel my subscription to Kindle Unlimited
after the free period ends.  While Amazon brags about having
600,000 free books in the program, the truth is that these are primarily
indie authors who enrolled their books in KDP Select, plus a few
big-name authors Amazon probably paid to participate.  In other
words, if you struggled to find a book to borrow using your prime
membership, you're going to struggle even more to find enough books to
make your $10 a month worthwhile.



Plus, Kindle Unlimited
isn't truly unlimited.  I started poking through all of the authors
whose books I wanted to read, finding that about a quarter of them had
books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited.  (Most of my books and all of
Aimee's books are there, in case you're curious.)  So that I
wouldn't have to repeat the legwork, I went ahead and downloaded all of
the ones I was at all interested in...until Amazon told me I'd hit my 10
book limit.  Yep, that's right, their book limit is lower than
that of the public library --- nowhere near unlimited.  However,
from a practical standpoint, you can always return a book and borrow a
new one, so you could keep reading using Kindle Unlimited for as long as
you wanted.



What would it take to
keep me subscribed?  If Amazon found a way to get the big
publishers and all indie authors on board and had every kindle ebook
enrolled in the program, so I really could read whatever I want for $10
per month, I would totally pay for it.  I doubt that's going to
happen anytime soon.



A writer's perspective



Books bought and borrowed




Okay, moving on to the writer's point of view.  Although I was slightly leery of the Kindle Owner's Lending Library
when it first came about, I've since grown to love the program (which
Kindle Unlimited seems to be piggy-backing on).  Every time a
reader borrows one of my books using their prime membership, I get a
chunk of the fund Amazon has set aside to remunerate authors, and the
chunk is pretty hefty.  Over the last year, borrow income has
averaged $2.27 per book for me, bringing in a whopping $2,756 ---
nothing to sneeze at!  Now, authors who charge a lot more for their
books are probably less keen, since if your book costs more than $3.27
(with no photos to lower the net amount that goes to authors), you'll
lose money on a borrow rather than a buy.  However, I suspect that
some borrowers will still go on to buy your book so they can keep it for
a reread, which evens things out.  Meanwhile, for those of us who
price our books to sell, we get quite a bit more from a borrow than a
buy.



Although I'll have to
wait until I see my first sales report to confirm this, everything I've
read so far suggests that Amazon plans to treat borrows using Kindle
Unlimited the same way as borrows using Amazon Prime.  The only
difference is that they won't pay authors until a reader has consumed at
least 10% of the book, a way of preventing kindle stuffing from
breaking Amazon's bank.  So, from a writer's standpoint, the only
concern is to keep an eye on Amazon's global fund to make sure the
borrow income per book doesn't decline, something I was concerned about
at first, but am less worried about now that the fund has been in
operation for years and has only dropped below $2 per book once in the
last twelve months.



It's a good thing that
Kindle Unlimited looks like it won't hurt indie authors since we don't
really have a choice in the matter.  If we want to keep the
benefits of KDP Select, our books are automatically enrolled (although
we have the option of unenrolling right now rather than waiting until
the end of our usual 90-day contract if we're scared of Kindle
Unlimited).  I'll try to remember to post a followup in a few
months once the dust settles and the data is in.

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Published on July 19, 2014 04:25

July 6, 2014

June 2014: Indie book favorites

A Lonely MagicI'm
afraid I don't have quite as many good books to recommend to you this
month.  In fact, most of the freebies I downloaded on Amazon in
June were duds, with a significant quantity of the books below sent to
me by the author to review or borrowed via the kindle owner's lending
library.  But, don't worry, half of the titles I recommend this
month are free, and all will capture your interest and keep you hooked
until the bitter end.



A Lonely Magic by Sarah Wynde.  Last month,
I sang the praises of Wynde's Tassamara series, and this month I was
thrilled when Wynde sent me a review copy of her newest book (which will
be available to the general public on Tuesday).  A Lonely Magic
is set in a different fantastical world than Wynde's previous books,
but it has the same great character development and world-building as
the Tassamara series.  A Lonely Magic was a real treat to read, and I'm waited with bated breath for the next installments in the series.



A Scandalous Husband
by Bev Pettersen.  I looked forward to borrowing another Pettersen
novel all month, and when my lending-library privileges rolled around
again, I downloaded this book immediately.  I wasn't
disappointed!  Take a dose of equine therapy, mix in the struggle
to survive without losing yourself in prison, shake up with a sweet love
story, and you have a winning novel that will be hard to put
down.  Plus, unlike many Amazon authors, Pettersen has enrolled
nearly all of her titles in the KDP select program, so if you have
Amazon Prime, you can borrow one book for free each month.



Prisoner by Lia Silver.  I'm not sure if this fascinating werewolf fantasy is perma-free or just free right now, but either way I highly recommend it to those who enjoy great world-building and characters.  (You can see my review of the companion book in my March sumup.)



The Chocolate Heart
by Laura Florand.  I'm not so sure this is an indie book, although
I downloaded it for free (which is no longer the price,
unfortunately).  Unlike most contemporary romances, this one had
meat in the form of fascinating information about high-class French
restaurant culture.  Plus a truly romantic story between two
characters you won't want to leave.



The Duchess of Love by Sallie MacKenzie.  This is a great regency romance, complete with a Greek-scholarly, reading-obsessed family.



The Passion of Patrick MacNeill by Virginia Kantra.  This perma-free book is straight contemporary romance, but is a fun read if you like fluff.



Winters Heat by Cristin Harber.  Okay, the lack of an apostrophe in the title drives me crazy, but otherwise I recommend this perma-free book to all lovers of romantic suspense.



Saving Grace by Norah Wilson.  This perma-free book is good romantic suspense, with a slightly more thought-out version of the classic amnesia hook than you usually see.



Hopefully these recommendations will keep your kindle full this month.  Happy reading!

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Published on July 06, 2014 11:34

June 18, 2014

How to get ebook reviews

TrailersteadingReviews
make or break indie ebooks by relatively unknown authors.  And I
hear a lot of authors complaining that their readers won't write
reviews.  In case you're having trouble getting reviews, here are
some tips for bringing in those essential ratings.



How many reviews should you expect? 
You're probably reading this post because you think your books aren't
getting enough reviews, but it's possible the problem is simply that you
haven't sold or given away enough copies yet.  Looking at all of
the books put out by Wetknee, we average about 87
paid downloads per review, so if you've only sold a handful of books,
you probably won't have many (or any) reviews.  Our most-reviewed
books are all fiction, in which category ebooks average only 14 paid
downloads per review, while the non-fiction titles average closer to 98
paid downloads per review.  (As a side note, you should keep in
mind that I put in
the effort with fiction to carry out review swaps and that I tend to
give away a lot more fiction books
during free periods than I do non-fiction books, so these numbers may
not be entirely due to the fiction/non-fiction divide.)  If you do
the math and find that your book isn't stacking up, keep reading for
more options.



Have you contacted potential reviewers? 
Review swaps are a tried-and-true method of garnering reviews. 
The theory is simple --- you read and review the book of another author
while they do the same for your book.  This strategy depends on you
being a fast reader and being able to find authors who write in a
similar genre and at a similar level (meaning that they're not best-sellers who have
thousands of fans itching to leave reviews through no effort on the
author's part). 



I use Goodreads to track down potential reviewers,
checking out indie authors whose books I've enjoyed reading in the past
and whose rank on Amazon is a bit below mine (meaning they're probably
even hungrier for reviews than I am).  I
usually sweeten the pot by reviewing one of the author's books even
before I send the message to ask if she'd like to take part in a
swap.  If you follow my lead, be sure to make it clear that you're
looking for an honest review, but include your standards if, like me, you prefer to simply leave no
review on books by new authors that would merit fewer than three stars.



On a related note, I sometimes also let my fans have the opportunity to
download a free review copy right before or right after a new book goes
live, but I haven't decided whether this strategy is the best use of
fan-power (since it reduces those critical early sales). 
No matter how you go about soliciting reviews, this strategy is most
helpful when used just before or just after a book launches so the title
jumps out of the gate.



Number of ebook buys in proportion to number of reviewsHave you run a free period? 
Giving away a few thousand copies of an ebook is a great way to net at
least a few reviews.  As a plus, people are naturally inclined to
leave nicer reviews when they get a book for free, so chances are many
of your reviews will be good.  To do this on Amazon, you'll have to
sign up for the KDP program,
meaning you promise not to sell your book anywhere else for 30 days,
then you simply use the dialogue within Amazon to "Manage benefits."



I'm still deciding whether the best period to set a new book free for
the first time is about a week after launch or a few weeks later. 
The first strategy gets more good reviews faster, but also tends to make
my fans wait to get a free copy rather than buying, which lowers the
early sales rank of the book. 



As a side note, if you run a free period and give away at least 1,000
copies but don't get any reviews, that may be a sign your book isn't as
awesome as you thought it was, or at the least that the book doesn't
have much appeal for the masses.  Scroll down to the end of this
post for more thoughts in that direction.



Do you explicitly ask within your book for readers to leave a review?  Don't forget to add in a page or two of back-matter after your story to plug your other books, to mention your email list,
and to beg for reviews.  If a reader really loves your book,
they'll be much more likely to write a review if they see the request at
the same time they bask in that sated afterglow of a perfect story.



If you want even more reviews, you might follow the lead of a few
indie authors I've noticed recently who tell readers at the end of the book
that if you leave a review and email the author a link, she'll send you
a free copy of a book of your choice.  The author I emailed actually sent me all of her books to review (presumably because my first effort passed muster).  This strategy often leads to even more good reviews by readers who adore your work.



How effective is an explicit request for a review?  I haven't
updated some of my older books to include either type of ask, and the
un-ask books average about 190 paid downloads per review while the ask
books average about 43 paid downloads per review, so the ask definitely
seems to help.  Take these numbers with a grain of salt, though ---
I also wasn't soliciting review swaps for early books and don't
currently run free periods for most of the early books for various
reasons.  That caveat aside, it's a safe assumption that the ask
strategy should garner you a slow-but-steady stream of reviews,
proportional to how many books you've sold. 



ShiftlessWhen should you stop worrying about reviews? 
More reviews are always better (unless they average below 4 stars on
Amazon or below 3 stars on Goodreads), but I generally stop hustling
once I achieve 10 to 20 reviews.  That's about how many reviews it
takes for strangers to decide your book isn't only being reviewed by
your mother and best friends, so after that you can let the book gain
review momentum by itself.



Should you read your reviews?  Many authors will tell you not to read your book's reviews, and it is
definitely bad form to comment on them (except to note when an issue
has been resolved).  However, if you can take a step back from your
ego, there are benefits to be gained from keeping an eye on those
reviews.



On Amazon, you can vote a review up or down, which helps the reviews
that you decide are most marketable rise to the front page, especially
early in a book's life.  You can also take excerpts from these
reviews and add them to near the top of your product page using Author
Central.  Both of these strategies can help turn specific reviews
into sales.



In addition, once you learn to separate the constructive criticisms from
the random comments, you can learn from bad reviews.  I was
selling ebooks on Amazon for years before I bought a Kindle, and it was
an early review that alerted me to the fact that readers expect linked
tables of contents.  Reviews also helped me
realize that readers expect about 10,000 words per dollar in the
non-fiction category but significantly more in the fiction category.  Finally, readers
are quick to note if your book has an inordinate number of typos
(which, thankfully, hasn't been a problem with my books) and to mention
other easily-solved problems.



Why are your reviews lower on Goodreads than on Amazon? 
If, like me, you enjoy Goodreads, you may be saddened to see that a
book with a 4.5-star rating on Goodreads has a 3.6-star rating on
Goodreads.  What's up?  I think that many reviewers realize
that reviews on Amazon affect an author's bread and butter, so those
readers tend to round their Amazon scores up, while they often rate for
purely personal reasons on Goodreads and thus trend toward lower
ratings.  In addition, I suspect I'm not the only one who rates
books on Amazon only if I feel comfortable giving the book five stars,
while I rate just about everything I read over on Goodreads.  
You can see this effect by looking at the Amazon and Goodreads reviews
of some of your favorite authors --- I'll bet their report card on
Goodreads is much less impressive than on Amazon.  Here, my advice
to authors is: don't stress about moderately low Goodreads
reviews.  Reviews on Goodreads help your books spread by word of
mouth and everyone understands average ratings will be lower there.



Pasture BasicsAre there book-related issues that make you less likely to get reviews?  With
free books, especially, it's essential to hook readers within the first
few pages.  Amazon now has thousands of free ebooks available at
any one time, so if a reader isn't sucked in immediately, she'll
probably turn elsewhere.  In my own experience, I tend to delete three free books for every one I finish, and in most
cases I give up on those supposed "losers" within a few minutes of
virtually opening the book.



Yet another point where your book might be losing reviewers is if it's
too far outside the mainstream genres.  Readers tend to be confused
by
books unlike anything they've read before, so you might have written the
next great American novel...but will see no reviews because readers are
too
confused by the work's unusualness.  On a related note, you may
simply be misclassifying your book --- if your readers are expecting
chick lit, they're not going to be interested in hard-boiled mysteries
and will quickly hit the delete key.



What if you've tried everything and you're still not getting reviews? 
It's a tough thing to accept, but if you've done everything I mention
in this post and you still aren't seeing many reviews, now might be the
time to ask yourself whether perhaps readers are being nice by not
saying anything at all.  The solution is: keep writing!  Your next book will likely be better and will garner more glowing reviews.



Do you have other
review-gathering tips I didn't cover here?  I'd love to hear other
authors' experience getting those critical first reviews.

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Published on June 18, 2014 12:12

June 17, 2014

The Working Chicken available beyond Amazon

Smashwords book




Over 6,000 readers have enjoyed The Working Chicken on Amazon, and now this popular title is available from non-Amazon retailers!  The Working Chicken
is a short but picture-heavy guide that helps new chicken keepers learn
the basics about their new flock, and the ebook has enjoyed dozens of
glowing reviews.  Now you can download a copy for 99 cents from Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, or from several other retailers.



As a side note, I suspect The Low-Cost Sunroom has been on Smashwords
long enough that it has showed up in the Apple store, but I don't think
I can actually provide a link since their store appears to be
searchable only using an app on Apple devices.  I'd be curious to
hear from someone who reads ebooks from the Apple store.  Does The Low-Cost Sunroom
show up in a search?  Is there a way for me to include links to it
here, or is the app feature the only way to buy apple books?



Thanks for reading!

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Published on June 17, 2014 12:44