Tomas’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Tomas’s comments from the Support for Indie Authors group.

I think these come in waves. I've had a couple of weird invites in past, so I enabled the challenge question, and that seems to have stopped that - I guess the bot makers aren't willing to deal with that, especially as the invites are probably scripted so they wouldn't be even able to read that question, let alone make a sensible answer.

Then, at some point, there were a plethora of spam likes from profiles that had very suspicious links as their website on their profile. That seems to have lessened in intensity as well, and they moved the link from the website section to commenting them on their own profile, which is way low where few people scroll. I reported them anyway.

It's often either a new account or one that was inactive for years (and thus is obviously hacked account).

Also, thanks Gifford and Eileen for the information about Reedsy - I've heard the name, but I didn't expect them to end up in spam if they're reputable. I may give them a look at some point.

One thing with such review services I'd like to know (from writer's PoV) is how easy is to remove your book from being up there - my point is that I could imagine staying there for a while to get ARC reviews, then leaving so I can enroll in KU (because, as a beginning fantasy author, it doesn't seem practical to spread wide when fantasy specifically has a decent amount of KU readers - even though I have yet to tap into them). So yeah, if I was to consider such a service, I'd need to know how reliable it is to join/leave.

EDIT: I'd have the same question for any other similar ARC/review service if you know any.

Sotto wrote: "I assume you mean for this kind of requests, because I understand that many members would want their profiles as private (go to check mine, still getting the hang of it)."

Yes.

Private profile is always a major warning...

Gail wrote: "And did you know about Amazon's requirement that any reviewers spend at least $50 in the store they are reviewing?"

Yeah, it's being mentioned for a while as an attempt to block bots posting paid fake reviews. I don't have any evidence for it - I'm steadily above the $50/year mark for Kindle e-books.

I've had this end up in the spam folder on my contact form (at my website, hidden between 10 porn bot posts):
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Hi there, I really enjoy reading your blog and thought I’d say hi! I was wondering whether you’d consider joining the Discovery book review community — I think we could potentially be a good fit. In case you haven’t heard of Discovery, we spotlight gems of the indie publishing world — great books that are often overshadowed by big bestsellers. This is where people like you come in: our reviewers guide the community, spotting new trends and deciding which books we recommend to our 200k readers. If you think you might like to join us, here’s what to do next: 1. Fill in our application form here: [LINK REMOVED] 2. Once approved, you’ll get full access to our library of ARCs and other member perks. 3. Write reviews as often as you like and see them appear in our newsletters to readers. What do you think? I’m happy to chat more via email! You can reach me on victoria.jacobi@reedsy.com All the best, and thanks for your interesting work on the blog, Victoria, Professional Book Nerd @ Discovery
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Had anyone seen this one yet? I don't expect it to be legit anyway, just curious... the strange part is that I actually have someone loading the "contact me" page on the day this was posted (which isn't the case with bots because they somehow send it to the inbox directly, probably by some script).

I *am* the cactus!

That said, another block of edits done today, yay!

Valerie wrote: "Now, excuse me while I go and work on the next chapter of my own WIP - you've quite inspired me! :)"

I finally managed to get some time for writing today. First time after some two weeks. I admit I was holding it off because the block I'm editing now is quite a compact set of 5 chapters (I guess around 12-15k words total) so I wanted to take it in a couple of sessions at most.
I managed to surprise myself today with two chapters edited (though, apart from the first scene, they were surface edits) and three new scenes written. A good day, I'd say. I should have some writing time on Thursday and Friday, and today made me feel like I could actually have this block edited by the end of the week.

Nailed it :D

Maybe it's just the winter. Especially as it gets a bit bleak here in the suburbs as the snow melts quite fast, so it's mostly muddy anyway.

Jay wrote: "Readers don’t notice point-of-view errors."

My experience would say it's the opposite. But I guess it comes down to each individual beta reader. Maybe I was lucky...

Dwayne wrote: "If your book is fantasy at all, even borderline, you could even have the horses speaking to one another."

Now that you mention this, I have a crazy idea: dragonrider fantasy from the dragon's point of view.

Keep in mind that how many readers are at *other* retailers than Amazon differs by genre. In some genres, KU has a very dominant position. In general, KU seems to favor romance and erotica (in many forms) where the books are short (so the monthly fee is way better for a reader than buying tens of books) and fantasy where the books are long and cost more to purchase (and thus the amount of pages increases the payout for a full read).

It may be worth looking into your genre specifics. Look up the books in top 100 in your genre and see how many of them are in KU. If many - the genre favors KU. If few, it probably favors direct purchases.

To me, writing on a touchscreen with smaller keys just sucks compared to a PC keyboard. Way more typos and misclicks. I guess it's habit more than anything. That and no right-click, no Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to eventually copy bits between GR, blog, and Amazon (here, touchscreen loses even more), etc.
So, nope, unless it's extremely urgent, I won't type anything longer than a sentence without a proper keyboard.

Eileen wrote: "I've found that a lot of readers can be shy about writing reviews, but most are more than willing to click on X number of stars."

Personal experience as a reader: when I finish a book on kindle, it gives me the rate+reviews screen. It's easy to click the starts, but it's very inconvenient to write something longer than a sentence without a proper keyboard, at least for me. Which means I'd have to return to the book page later to write a review.

The sales to reviews ratio is mentioned in many aspects - what, exactly, it is, differs. I had a course on surveys at uni, and the lecturer mentioned reviews/rating, and the usual estimate is 5% success for just rating, less if it includes review.

Eldon wrote: "Agree - David Gaughran knows his stuff. And he offers a free course."

I've read his books. I didn't finish the video course - much of it was in the books as well, and I'm not much into video format because a book takes all my focus while video with just a person reciting something leads to me doing other stuff and eventually filtering the sound out.
But he outright advises to not spend too much money on promoting a series that's not finished yet. At the same time, he advises building an audience during that time, which does seem to be self-contradictory to a degree, because you won't have people just stumble upon your book by chance unless you're in some very specific niche with very low competition.
(SPOILER: Sword-and-Sorcery and Coming-of-age Fantasy aren't low-competition genres. That's why the US featured deal can cost around $2000.)
Hence why I'm looking at some low-spend methods that'd give me a couple of genuine reviews. Because trying to sell a series without reviews won't help that much even if it's complete.

Yes, US is the dominant ebook market. Even I, who is from Europe, buy books from Amazon US because they have way more filtering options (sub-genres) than the localized counterparts. So a lot of e-book shoppers on Amazon US are likely international. I think that's also reason why it's hard to get a decent promotion - as one thing seems to work better, people flock there and it drives the price up to the point it stops working so well. believe Amazon ads are on a rollercoaster in that aspect (in some genres maybe). And many of the smaller deal sites may not have that good results.

Eldon, I'll try to message you later this week - I will be a bit busy now, and we may get more facts and opinions here in the meantime, so it may not be needed as much by that time.

I don't want to derail the thread too much; Eldon, would you mind if I messaged you for specifics during the week?

Eldon wrote: "Probably not what you want to hear Tomas, but I don't think there are any shortcuts for that."

I know that, and I'm not looking for a "get rich quick" method. Just anything that'd get my foot out of the door, because it's not like people would notice a book that's at #2,5M-th spot in the rankings. But what I mostly see is "you need reviews to have a meaningful chance at decent ad results" but how do you get reviews without having reviews...?

About featured deals... not only hard to be accepted, but aren't they crazy expensive anyway? I've seen a screenshot that showed it may cost around $2000... who the hell has that money to spare these days?

Sure, I could run a normal countdown deal, but I have no clue how to promote that in a way that wouldn't make a hole in my pocket.

EDIT: also, a major method like a featured deal wouldn't be too good an idea until I have the trilogy complete as the people would probably forget my book before the next one is out, hence I'm looking for some small-scale method.