John’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2014)

John’s comments from the Editio Self-Publishing group.

The only problem I see with that is that you'd (potentially) be asking your viewer to comment before she's had time to see if she likes the site.

A lot of corporate sites have problems with this. I log in to check (as one example) on an insurance policy for the first time, and the first thing I see is a popup asking me to rate the site. At that point I'm completely incapable of judging its effectiveness, so I click the X and that's that.

I don't see a problem with the pop-up so long as it's set not to pop up every time the same user clicks on it. Most of the pop-up plugins I've looked at have an option like that, generally to prevent it from popping up for the same reader more than once a month or so.

I'll watch this thread because I have the same problem finding subscribers for JohnPearceAuthor.com.

I created both the Kindle and paperback versions of Treasure of Saint-Lazare using Adobe Indesign. It has a significant learning curve and is expensive, but you can rent it by the month for a reasonable price and, with practice, the results are outstanding. It has a plugin to create Kindle files.

The input to Indesign was the output from Scrivener.

I did have to tweak and re-upload the file several times to make it look exactly the way I wanted.

Find it here: http://www.adobe.com/products/indesig...

Tellulah wrote: "Have any of you publishing through a POD wanted to get advance review copies to send out to bloggers? How have you handled it? I've been told my options are either: 1) order proof copies (can only ..."

You can use a separate printer for your Advance Reader Copy, which I did the first time. But I later found that if you confer carefully with your rep at LightningSource they will do it the way you want and withhold its information from publication channels. Then you can re-do your cover and bookblock (if you've made changes) and release it for publication.

They are very responsive. I also think the production quality is a bit higher than CreateSpace.

I think that's virtually impossible to know, because rankings are influenced so much by the size of the category the book is listed in. But here's a real-life example that may help.

Today I put my novel Treasure of Saint-Lazare on a Kindle Countdown discount, offering at 99c instead of the usual $3.99. (It will rise to $1.99 after two days, then to $2.99 after two more days, and finally end up back at $3.99 on the seventh day.)

This is a book that has been at #25 in paid Kindle historical mysteries and #2 in free historical mysteries, so it has sales ability. It has been on Amazon for 15 months.

In a period of three hours today I sold three books. My ranking jumped from 180,000 to 72,000 (this is using the kindlenationdaily.com reporting service).

I've seen this sort of volatility before, so I think it's fairly typical.

Treasure of Saint-Lazare will be on Kindle Countdown promotion Thursday Jan. 24 - Wednesday Jan. 29.

It's a Paris thriller about the search for a painting that's been missing since WWII -- Raphael's irreplaceable "Portrait of a Young Man." It reached #25 in Kindle historical mysteries (#2 among free books) and is also available in trade paperback and audio versions.



or: http://j.mp/UKIVVi

From my own experience:

1. Professional and experienced reviewers will recognize the ARC for what it is and read through the typos without noticing them.

2. Newbie reviewers will review the typos.

3. It's not a good idea to distribute ARCs to the general public.