Blogs, blogs and more blogs
That's right, I have spent the last few days tirelessly searching for blogs that would be open to reviewing Fire. The thing is, I love it, my friends love it, the few friends-of-friends who have now read it love it. But what I really need is for people not connected to me in any way to love it. Preferably people who will be able to promote it to other readers...
Saying that, I did manage to build up a pretty big readership on Wattpad. I posted the first eleven chapters on there and got lots of great feedback; within a week Fire made it into the top ten fantasy stories, which was amazing.
However, all this blog-approaching has given me another problem: to KPD Select, or to not KPD Select... For those of you who don't know, KPD Select is Amazon's 'deluxe account'. It's free to join and it allows you to offer your book for free (5 days in every 90...) and enrolls your book in the Kindle Lending Library. In return, you give Amazon exclusivity. I do plan on only selling my book via Amazon, however, to get reviews (and thus more readers), I need to be able to give my book to bloggers. As far as I have been able to work out from reading the forum posts on select, giving your book away for free violates the exclusivity.
It seems a little extreme to sign up, then bombard bloggers with emails telling them that, if they would like to read and review my book, they need to download it from amazon on a particular date (although that would boost sales figures...) It's just too much hassle for them, which is fair enough, when I'm the one requesting the review.
Instead, I'm contacting as many blogs as I can now, giving a copy to anyone who will take it (seriously, if you're interested, email me!) then in a week or so, I'll enroll in select, so that I can give it away for free to everyone.
If you have any thoughts on this (or experience) please comment below, I would love to hear them.
Saying that, I did manage to build up a pretty big readership on Wattpad. I posted the first eleven chapters on there and got lots of great feedback; within a week Fire made it into the top ten fantasy stories, which was amazing.
However, all this blog-approaching has given me another problem: to KPD Select, or to not KPD Select... For those of you who don't know, KPD Select is Amazon's 'deluxe account'. It's free to join and it allows you to offer your book for free (5 days in every 90...) and enrolls your book in the Kindle Lending Library. In return, you give Amazon exclusivity. I do plan on only selling my book via Amazon, however, to get reviews (and thus more readers), I need to be able to give my book to bloggers. As far as I have been able to work out from reading the forum posts on select, giving your book away for free violates the exclusivity.
It seems a little extreme to sign up, then bombard bloggers with emails telling them that, if they would like to read and review my book, they need to download it from amazon on a particular date (although that would boost sales figures...) It's just too much hassle for them, which is fair enough, when I'm the one requesting the review.
Instead, I'm contacting as many blogs as I can now, giving a copy to anyone who will take it (seriously, if you're interested, email me!) then in a week or so, I'll enroll in select, so that I can give it away for free to everyone.
If you have any thoughts on this (or experience) please comment below, I would love to hear them.
date
newest »
newest »
Thanks. I've heard Smashwords mentioned a few times on goodreads, but I'm not really sure what it is. The coupon idea sounds great though and might allow me to do giveaways too, which I would really like to do. I will look into it more this evening...I'm pleased that you were interested in reading it and really hope that you enjoy it.
Heather wrote: "Thanks. I've heard Smashwords mentioned a few times on goodreads, but I'm not really sure what it is. The coupon idea sounds great though and might allow me to do giveaways too, which I would reall..."I like Smashwords. The place allows you to download e-books in any format. The only problem is their search function is crap and they're fairly disorganized, so it's hard to just browse. I think if they fixed that, they could be a major competitor against Amazon.
Just my 2 cents plus inflation. :-) I am honored you chose me as one of your blogs to review the book. I'll try to read it sooner rather than later.