On Quality: Self Publishing and Amazon

I’m set to send the first book off to the editor on Monday, and possibly the second book as well, as my strategy continues to be refined.

At first, it was simple: create an apparatus for sales and marketing to take place smoothly and seamlessly and in conjunction.

But the further I’m getting into it the more I’m realizing I’m missing a logical step: get the book in front of people’s eyeballs.

All the mentors that I’m growing to trust and listen to are saying that “free” is the way to go in the beginning, and naturally, I agree. Obscurity is indeed the enemy when it comes to self-publishing. The only feedback I’ve managed to get is from giveaways and posting my book to Wattpad, all free as you can imagine. I’m still climbing the Everest of getting reviews, but thanks to Amazon, that’s looking to get to be a bit easier.

Amazon just recently changed their policy on book reviews to combat the paid and fraudulent reviews that are flooding the site and skewing the results of the best sellers lists and rankings. And after spending a few months on the site, I have to say I’m pretty thankful of that. Long story short, the only people that have to worry about this development are the people that aren’t very good writers and/or are more concerned with making a buck than delivering a quality product. I do, however, feel for those that might lose the reviews they’ve worked hard to gain over the course of many months, even years of hard marketing work.

I just visited my book, and the overall ranking on Amazon went from 2 million to 371,000 in the paid Kindle store, no doubt because of this policy and algorithm change.

After I did my research and started learning the basic strategies of self-publishing, I began noticing that every indie author and publisher, no matter how poor the quality of the product, were all doing the same thing. Clearly they all knew the basic strategy too.

Like the tenets of a religion, they knew how to categorize their books, how to offer for free or exclusively on Amazon to move up in rankings, to market and gain reviews, to gain the attention with the cover, etc. And it seemed their god was answering their prayers. They were all 5 star, stellar books, wouldn’t you know it! I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird doesn’t have the raving reviews of some of these $.99 books. And you know what was always the most helpful review? The one where the review was mixed, scathing or “I don’t get it.” In a sea of five stars, these reviews were the beacon of light. I’m looking at you, 50 shades.

I never want to be that author, and I would never be happy with a career that looked like that Amazon page. Yes, the goal is to support myself doing this, but because I love it and  I’m great— not just good– at it, not because this is the industry that I’m choosing to get money in. I mean I’m glad you can write a book and all, but unfortunately for literature, we don’t have the same kind of gatekeeping institutions like sports or other forms of entertainment. Ain’t no NFL, NBA, or even American Idol for literature, and visual art tends to suffer the same ills. Society still treats writing a whole manuscript or covering an entire canvas a brave, stunning achievement that should be celebrated across the board. And while I mostly agree with that, the memo hasn’t yet gone out that not everyone is going to pay money for your therapy project. Often these industries have to resort to snobbery to draw a line and therefore has to become very stuffy and serious to ensure that quality is maintained, and that leads to the opposite extreme.

Well. Don’t know how we got on that, but I must say I appreciate Amazon’s devotion to quality, helping readers like you and writers like me out. It’s hard enough starting out at the bottom.

At any rate, I’m going to be giving this book away right now like a demented prostitute until I can figure out what I’m working with here, until I can find more of my readers to lead me to the sweet spot of art and commerce, like wind in the sales. No one likes the idea of starting off in the bargain bin, but there’s a reason why there’s a bargain bin. It’s because people buy and/or look at what’s in the bargain bin. Besides, “free” is not a bargain, it’s free. It’s generous act, a courageous and revolutionary one that you have complete control over. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. Oh yeah, and I think I’m going to actually start to let family and friends on what I’m doing as well, so. Pray for me.