Peter Laurent's Blog - Posts Tagged "review"
The Battle for Reviews
After a stunning few days following the free promotion, The Covert Academy soared up the Amazon charts to #5 in SciFi Adventure as a paid title, and #2 in the UK.
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
Fully Sick
Hey there fine people who read this. I was planning to make a start on Book 2 this week, but I came down with a very nasty cold on Tuesday. Woe is me and all that.
I think I'm finally on the mend so hopefully I'll be able to get going with some writing on Monday. Yay!
I read a few writing blogs on writersdigest.com this week, and was amazed to find at least two or three blogs written by authors who incorrectly wrote "less" instead of "fewer" (i.e. less words). But I won't name names.
I'm not perfect myself, having got "its" and "it's" wrong throughout The Covert Academy. One reviewer who didn't read the book (just the sample I assume) pointed this out in a review on Amazon.
I've since fixed the "its/it's" mistakes. I'm not sure anyone else even noticed.
Well, now we know...
Making mistakes is only human, and on a blog it's fine (though it doesn't instill me with confidence in the author).
What galls me is people being able to review books they haven't read, like a few people who have "reviewed" my book on Amazon US and UK.
I'm also told that some hateful reviews are written by jealous authors seeking to sabotage their fellow authors' work! What sort of sick mind would do that?
There is no way to trace these people, but it is apparently a fairly common occurence.
Amazon's review system is broken. Indie books live or die based on customer reviews.
They could easily fix it by:
*Forcing customers to buy the book to be able to review it. This would help weed out spammers.
*Increasing the minimum number of words for a review from 20 to, say, 100. This would help weed out reviews from the authors' friends and family.
*Abandoning the 5 star rating system entirely, or not making this number visible to the public. This would force customers to judge books based on the content of the reviews (and the book itself), rather than an average numerical rating.
*Perhaps only allow star-ratings from well known reviewers such as those in the top 10,000 on Amazon or other editorial reviewers.
Any other ideas?
I hope I don't sound bitter, I'm really not at all.
My book is doing better than I could have dreamed, and I am incredibly grateful to the people who write honest reviews, whether they are full of praise, criticisms or both.
Maybe it's because I'm still feeling a bit sick. Hopefully I'm back in full writing mode next week!
Cheers,
-Petes
I think I'm finally on the mend so hopefully I'll be able to get going with some writing on Monday. Yay!
I read a few writing blogs on writersdigest.com this week, and was amazed to find at least two or three blogs written by authors who incorrectly wrote "less" instead of "fewer" (i.e. less words). But I won't name names.
I'm not perfect myself, having got "its" and "it's" wrong throughout The Covert Academy. One reviewer who didn't read the book (just the sample I assume) pointed this out in a review on Amazon.
I've since fixed the "its/it's" mistakes. I'm not sure anyone else even noticed.
Well, now we know...
Making mistakes is only human, and on a blog it's fine (though it doesn't instill me with confidence in the author).
What galls me is people being able to review books they haven't read, like a few people who have "reviewed" my book on Amazon US and UK.
I'm also told that some hateful reviews are written by jealous authors seeking to sabotage their fellow authors' work! What sort of sick mind would do that?
There is no way to trace these people, but it is apparently a fairly common occurence.
Amazon's review system is broken. Indie books live or die based on customer reviews.
They could easily fix it by:
*Forcing customers to buy the book to be able to review it. This would help weed out spammers.
*Increasing the minimum number of words for a review from 20 to, say, 100. This would help weed out reviews from the authors' friends and family.
*Abandoning the 5 star rating system entirely, or not making this number visible to the public. This would force customers to judge books based on the content of the reviews (and the book itself), rather than an average numerical rating.
*Perhaps only allow star-ratings from well known reviewers such as those in the top 10,000 on Amazon or other editorial reviewers.
Any other ideas?
I hope I don't sound bitter, I'm really not at all.
My book is doing better than I could have dreamed, and I am incredibly grateful to the people who write honest reviews, whether they are full of praise, criticisms or both.
Maybe it's because I'm still feeling a bit sick. Hopefully I'm back in full writing mode next week!
Cheers,
-Petes
#amwriting
The Covert Academy reached #78 Overall and #1 SciFi Adventure on Amazon in the last freebie sale.
Fantastic to see so many people interested in reading it, thank you!
Double thanks to those who took the extra time to write a review.
I'll be writing Book 2 full-time over the next few months, which means writing these blog posts less often.
You can still follow what I'm up to on the Twitter machine, I'm @petes117.
Say hi and I'll follow back :)
Cheers,
-Petes
Fantastic to see so many people interested in reading it, thank you!
Double thanks to those who took the extra time to write a review.
I'll be writing Book 2 full-time over the next few months, which means writing these blog posts less often.
You can still follow what I'm up to on the Twitter machine, I'm @petes117.
Say hi and I'll follow back :)
Cheers,
-Petes
