For All You Potential Readers, Reviewers, and Self-Publishers

Updates on Pivot:

I feel the need to relate the difficulties and successes of self-publishing for a moment and give a behind-the-scenes look at what I have done for Pivot:

Pre-pub:

1.) First, of course, I finished the book. I thought it was a damn good one. There is no way of knowing for sure, however, without feedback, because 1.) after you work and rework something, it all becomes an unknowable and chaotic mess, and 2.) I'm not blind to the fact that probably all self-publishers think their book is damn good. To get /honest/ feedback, friends are not the place to go because they either 1.) really don't want to read your work, 2.) don't have time to, 3.) are going to give you false positivity, or even worse, 4.) they are going to give you so much negativity that it kills your love of writing. It is very unlikely that friends and family are going to review your book in the way that you would like them to - sincerely, genuinely, but not too harshly. The first reviews to come in needed to be distant for me. Even now, only one friend currently knows that I have self-published this book. I haven't told my family, my friends, etc..

2.) Charging people money for a book is a way of making sure it doesn't go too far at first. It's a way to reign it in before the reviews start. I needed to know if people would connect with my book or not. So, I started with charging $2.99 for it, and I did not invest too much into the cover. Why invest $300, if the book is potentially going to be reviewed as the most horrible thing ever written? My ultimate plan was: I love Pivot, but if the world deems that this book is shit, I'm taking it down, and that will be the end of it.

Pub:

1.) I thought Amazon's KDP would be helpful for those 5 days in which they allow you to give away your book for free. I advertised on Facebook for it, and I was fairly successful. It was expensive, however, and even though I had approximately 1200 downloads of my book, not a single person reviewed it on Amazon. I found this to be strange. In addition, in KDP, you only get 5 free download days every 3 months. That is not long enough for anything to permeate for the long-term. Unless your series is already built and humming along, using KDP alone is insanity.

2.) So, I switched to GoodReads, and I had far more success. Sending out physical books to those that were interested in Pivot's topic allowed for far more ratings and reviews. In addition, it is wonderful to interact with readers and get feedback on aspects of the book. There have been many praises of Pivot in terms of 1.) the quality of the writing, 2.) the twists in plot, 3.) its enigmatic qualities, 4.) variety of characters, 5.) the intensity of the prose, 6.) its originality, 7.) the psychological aspects of it, 8.) something ineffably good about it. So far, the criticisms have been 1.) the beginning of the book is slow to build, 2.) the cover is terrible - it isn't up to par with the writing and it isn't relevant to what the book is about, and 3.) the book jumps around too much and/or is too violent. My point here is that people are /willing/ to discuss these aspects of the book with me, and that is fantastic. It can help me become a better writer, and it means that I'm not alone with wanting to see where these characters go, what Jack will become, and for the darkness and sublime mixture to continue to dazzle. GoodReads, because of these things, is 100% better than Amazon by far.

*Sending out physical books on GoodReads is pricey, though, and there is no way that I could get 1200 out there without spending $8400. Hehe... no.

Post-pub:

I am commissioning a custom cover for Pivot.

The time and money necessary for a quality cover are worth it. Pivot deserves it. My readers deserve it - I'd rather them not grimace every time they see those generic and pre-fabricated stock photo flames. It will be a few weeks, at least, before this cover is created, though.

In addition, I will probably give away 25 free paperback copies of Pivot per week for as long as I possibly can. "Why?" you ask. Well...

To reach readers who want to read my book, 25 free copies are useful. But there is another reason: It's the reviews. At least twenty reviews (not ratings) are necessary for certain free or inexpensive advertisings of /quality/ books. The potential hitch is that the book's rating must be between 4 and 5 stars, and there is never any sure-fire guarantee that Pivot will receive that rating once its number of reviews on Amazon hits twenty and/or goes over.

But I'm chugging along and trying. It is better to try and fail than not try at all.

It's a damn good book, though. I believe so. I hope that you, whoever you are, agree.