World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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What 'objective' instruments do writers have to evaluate their work?
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Nik,You're absolutely right about a 4 star review being worse than a 2 or 1 star. I have 14 5 star reviews right now out of 14 total reviews and I honestly think that hurt my submission to bookbub. They simply don't believe it although I am piwerless to do anything about it :(
I also think 4 or 5 of us should start a serious writing group so we can hyperfocus on our titles. If you create it and make it private sign me up.
Lastly, objectivity seems a pipe dream at times, right? Amazon gives you a report of your page views or impressions if you use their marketing service. Not sure about apps that can do the same but that would be really cool.
A serious writing group is probably always a good idea and such (I'm not sure how serious though) groups are being formed here on GR almost on daily basis. If you have enough members interested - why not, after all - whatever's helpful to the members here is welcome.I personally wouldn't be able to allocate enough time to participate at this stage, but I reserve the right to kindly ask to join later.
Sounds good...I will sketch out the structure/guidelines etc. if kept small it could be more helpful than the spray and pray method.
Nik wrote: "As a spin-off of some other discussions here, I thought to myself what can be viewed as something objective in such a subjective thing as art?...when a few people point at the same problem or vice versa - praise the same thing, it starts to matter, it may be viewed already as something transpiring individual subjective opinion. 10-20 even much more so."
totally agree! reviews are not an objective evaluation of the overall value of a work of art/entertainment. even likes/dislikes.
however, the first question to ask is what attribute of the work do you want to have objectively evaluated? its overall value? economic value? whether people like it?
if it's economic value, then the objective evaluation is simple: # of purchases / # of views.
if you haven't published yet, then beta readers or an editor at a book publisher are the next best thing. beta readers cannot be just any reader that you pull off the net. they have to meet certain criteria; for example, they should be familiar w/your genre.
if you want an objective evaluation of your writing, then coming from a western humanities education, i'm a little bit of a western classicist in that regard. if your story loosely meets the criteria in Poetics and your mechanics follow The Elements of Style, then i'd say you're good to go.
then, it comes down to the writing "style" that predominates in English-speaking countries and your target genre. the predominant style in English-speaking countries for more "entertainment-oriented" stories is exemplified by Jim Butcher's writing advice series: http://www.moreknown.com/scenes-seque...
now, if you think that economic value also depends on how many sales you have, then you'd consider your choice of genre; for example, in romance, were-bears are quite the recent rage.
(a few side notes that reveal some of my biases:
* i wouldn't consider my own writing--so far--art; it's just entertainment.
* the # of sales that i would get does hold quite a bit of import for me.
* it would be really great if anyone has more or different books that they look to for an evaluation of their writing! i'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my writing.
* by "entertainment-oriented" i mean loosely stories that are plot-driven and have quite a bit of action rather than more language- or internal-thought-oriented. the latter of which i refer to as Ivory Tower Syndrome as it tends to stem from an academic environment and be evaluated by the academics. James Joyce--who's writing i happen to enjoy quite a bit--falls into that category.)
AlexWhat an amazing breakdown!
Alex G wrote: "if it's economic value, then the objective evaluation is simple: # of purchases / # of views...."# of views of the Amazon's book page is one of the things, I'd really like to know..
Nik,As far as I know the only way to know how many impressions your Amazon page gets is to sign up for KMS, Kindle Marketing Services. If I hear of any other device I'll let you know.
Thanks, Tara! But that means that I need to order from Amazon some ads/promos, doesn't it?
Alas, yes lol. And their advertising rates requires a $100 opening deposit. That's the cost of two blog tours lol.
I'm not there yet with the paid marketing, but someday I might give it a try, if and when I have 3-4 titles aired
Nik wrote: "# of views of the Amazon's book page is one of the things, I'd really like to know.."oh wow. that is a key metric for an author. what would that reveal about amazon's internal workings? would you be able to game it? would you change your keywords?
maybe in KU they do?
Ugh. Hate KU - and not just because I'm non-fiction lol.
Nik wrote: "# of views of the Amazon's book page is one of the things, I'd really like to know.."so, even if amazon won't tell, you can still tell through other advertising means:
mailchimp -- see how many on your email list, click thru to your amazon book page (http://kb.mailchimp.com/reports/enabl...)
twitter -- see how many of your tweets result in a click to your amazon book page (https://business.twitter.com/help/con...)
this is interesting video about the difficulty of reaching your intended online audience:
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights...
Thanks for some helpful links and info, Alex. I guess, when I get into the 'paid' world I'm gonna receive more precise info about the ads/views/clicks/sales, but as long as I'm on a free ride I might still partially grope in the dark -:)
What puzzles me about this thread is why any author wants to "evaluate" their work. Sure, I would like to know how to improve sales, etc, but my view is, I have done as well as I could on the day (and I concede that looking back on earlier efforts, I would probably tweak them a bit, but so what?). As far as I am concerned, the number of tweets, etc, may well help sales (or maybe not) but it does not represent the quality of the work. I don't think any author can properly evaluate the quality of their own work because they are too involved in it.
Ian,To some extent I can agree with you - what's done is done and metrics may or may not help sales or improve the quality of your writing.
However, there is value in conversations like these because they are the result of honest attempts to improve as an author. Threads like these in addition to beta groups, feedback threads and honest review requests are proof that a great many of us realize that we, ourselves, are not objective enough to know what we should do to improve our writing.
Tara,Of course I think there is value in these conversations, otherwise I would not bother to be in them :-) And of course we want to improve (or at least I do). I also think reading and writing helps improve me. I have looked back at some earlier stuff, and am thankful some never saw the light of day. That, to me, is a sign I am improving. However, I am reasonably convinced I am not the right person to evaluate where I am now; I am too biased. All I can do is try to produce the best I can.
Sure, I myself, can't evaluate my work, therefore I'm asking about external, objective instruments. Obviously, I was satisfied with what I did, but that doesn't say much.As of why I'd like to know how good it is, if at all for that matter, - for several reasons. First, to evaluate its economic potential, whether my 1k (plus time and efforts) invested in production of each book is likely to ever return or it's a sunk cost and more importantly to decide whether to keep investing more time and money. Aside of economic aspect, it's also an artistic one - should I display proudly the books I wrote or maybe hide them in the darkest corner, so no one would see -:). I wrote in the childhood a couple of mischievous poems, but I never thought of myself as a poet. Not sure the sheer fact of writing say 50k words along an imaginary plot and scenes that I've devised amounts to being a writer. I think the notion of art requires some kind of recognition. Those less recognized may be called avant-garde or whatever, but if no one likes it, then maybe - it's the art for aliens or just garbage -:).
On an unconnected note, I'd mention that I'm on a short trip to Germany and a little less present here in a more global community, so if someone wants to hijack the group to some paradise, I might not be on board
It is always a good idea, I think to let a professional editor or proofreader to read a work before it is published. That is why I think a critical appreciation or book reviews are paramount. There must be critical feedback - good or bad,
here's a story-posting website (similar to wattpad.com) that purports to use AI to objectively determine the value of your story.https://www.inkitt.com/publishing
once an idea gets big, then a bunch of imitators start popping up.
as we talked more and more on this thread, i got to thinking of working w/some programmer friends of mine to come up w/some algorithms to quickly process stories, but looks like they beat me to it.
(i was DM'd thru twitter to submit to their contest)
Interesting stuff. They claim to have artificial intelligence algorithm, no less, measuring the level of engagement. Don't know how true or accurate that is, but the concept looks interesting. Checked their terms and I'm afraid I don't qualify under 'explicit sexual themes', but other than that and provided it's free and with reasonable other terms, might be worth trying.I see that it becomes popular to offer publishing deals nowadays, subject to different criteria
If artificial intelligence algorithm were to assess creative writing, then stream of consciousness type of narrative would not pass.
With commercial success it's easy: the number of sales should provide an ultimate answer. However what about the quality?Sales, reviews, prizes, esteemed literary critics, none of the above: what best reflects quality?
Probably lasting ability, however the books that really last outlast their authors so they don't know.
If you've been doing it for a while you can at least gauge quality in retrospect. I've been writing seriously since 1992 and I am so much better now than I was back then.
Hard to tell at the time though...
World, Writing, Wealth
Books mentioned in this topic
Poetics (other topics)The Elements of Style (other topics)
Is a reviewer's opinion objective? No, it's just a reviewer's opinion. Beta reader's? The same. 5 reviewers/ beta readers' opinions on some particular issue of your book? Stastically it probably still doesn't say much, but when a few people point at the same problem or vice versa - praise the same thing, it starts to matter, it may be viewed already as something transpiring individual subjective opinion. 10-20 even much more so.
But then the opinions may differ. How good is 'Grey Mountain' of John Grisham? Out of almost 17K!! reviewers, 37% gave it 5 star, 24% - 4, 19% - 3, 11% - 2 and 9% - 1 star. The positive feedback (4-5) is not that significantly larger than the neutral-negative (1-3). 'Digital Fortress' of Dan Brown has almost an even spread of each possible ranking. The answer is obviously equivocal, yet 444 people out of 1532 of those who rated the book, loved it enough to give it 5 stars. A lot of people! And another 300 hated it -:)
On the other hand, Da Vinci Code or Inferno of the same author give a much clearer picture... In general rarely the massively reviewed books would have an average much above 4 stars.
As I'm nowhere near these number of reviews, I'm still trying to look for something objective.
I ran a poll on my covers and regretfully out of around 20 votes, most were negative -:), so, although I do like them, I might re-order them some day.
I have 9 sample downloads on Smashword which haven't translated into sales (at least yet), which probably objectively means that the beginning is not engaging enough to sell the book. I heard there are apps or sites that can track Amazon book page views. Does anyone know which one? It would be interesting to see how many views a book attracts.
Reviews: absurdly, I think a phrase in a 4 star review: "Overall verdict – good not great" is much more of a 'killer' than a 2 star review, I've received on the other book.. -:)
What do you think?