ten helper review lottery discussion
GROUP RULES
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What if we've already reviewed the chosen book, will an alternate be provided?
Hi Rachel, good question. I think maybe the author can choose whatever books they want reviewed so if you happen to have reviewed an author's book already, they can request you to review an alternative book. If they don't have an alternative book, I guess you get a week's vacation!
I have a question. What about the price of the book? What happens if a book is (say) 3.99, and everyone buys it, but then your book is 0.99. It doesn't seem fair.Maybe when an author is going to have their book reviewed, they could lower the price to 0.99 for a day to allow every reviewer to buy it. I personally don't feel spending 0.99 a week for ten weeks is a problem, especially as 10 people are going to buy your book somewhere down the line.
An alternative is for the author to email copies via pdf, epub, etc, but then it gets complicated and also unfair if some people are buying and some people are emailing.
What do people think?
kdp only allows one deal at a time, and my book is already in a free day deal and can't be in the countdown deal for another 3 months, but if all the books are known ahead of time the list could be posted with all deal days and then the reviewers could snag copies when they become available and if not then a free copy should be made available. I like the standardized pricing between books. I have a kindle unlimited account, so any book in KDP I can get for *any price.
Hi RachelThanks for your response.
I was thinking about a way around this, and thinking maybe if A buys B's book for a dollar, then B buys A's book for 2 dollars, then A can reimburse B with a gift certificate for 50 cents, etc. But it might get complicated, especially as there will be ten people to juggle each time.
I think the best way is just to go ahead and for authors of expensive books to lower the price for a day if they can, but if not possible, just accept that we might not all be spending exactly the same amount as each other.
But for the most part it will be less than the cost of a cup of coffee in Starbucks once a week, so not a great expense, and at least some of that total expense will come back when an author's turn comes around and everyone else buys their book.
I don't anticipate having a list of books to review at the beginning. Once an author's name is drawn out of the hat for that week, I think the best way is for that author to post or email the other members to say what book or books he/she wants them to review. In that way, the author can even divide up reviewers for different books if he/she wants to (e.g. 6 people review this book and 4 people review that book).
I guess after we get going we'll find a few snags and as we do, I'm sure we'll find a way around them.
As soon as we get enough members, we'll begin.
Regards
Neil
Rachel wrote: "kdp only allows one deal at a time, and my book is already in a free day deal and can't be in the countdown deal for another 3 months, but if all the books are known ahead of time the list could be..."That's right. Book should be given free to avoid confusion with prices.
I was wondering...what is the word count for the 250 pages you're talking about?
I was wondering...what is the word count for the 250 pages you're talking about?
Tim wrote: "I was wondering...what is the word count for the 250 pages you're talking about?"Hi Tim
Take a look here and you'll see it shows the length as 109 pages:
http://www.amazon.com/Sri-Tennis-Knee...
Whatever the word count is for that book, double it and add a bit and that will be 250 pages.
CONTENTS:
1. What this group is for.
2. How it works
3. Rules (IMPORTANT)
4. Extra stuff you don't really need to know.
1. WHAT THIS GROUP IS FOR
This group is set up to provide reviews for authors. It's a form of review exchange: for every review you provide, you will receive one in return.
Yes you can probably get that elsewhere, but you may have to scour various boards and make ten separate requests to do so. Hopefully this group will make the process kind of automated and effortless.
Please note this group is for confident authors. By that I mean that you are not guaranteed a positive review so be honest with yourself and don't join if you think you're going to receive low reviews for a badly written, badly edited, hastily cobbled together book. It's a waste of time if everyone reads a book and gives it a low rating and the author declines to have the reviews posted.
2. HOW IT WORKS
Say we have ten members (all authors). Each weekend a member is chosen at random and the other members buy and review that author's book. (Book price should be 0.99 if possible - see RULE 3 below.)
Please send your review to me by email (chumblefish at yahoo dot co dot uk) no later than the following weekend.
When I have received all the reviews, I will then send you a review back. PLEASE NOTE: It might be the review you wrote or it might be someone else's review. (More thoughts about this are in 'EXTRA STUFF' below)
If the review is a 5-star review, please post it on Amazon and Goodreads.
If the review is 4-star or below, please show it to the author and ask them if they are happy for you to post it. If they are happy, post it.
Then I pull another name out of the hat, and we review that member's book the following week.
With ten members the whole cycle takes ten weeks. With five members, it will take five weeks, etc. At the beginning, the group might have just 4 or 5 members. If it works, it will no doubt grow, to a maximum of 10 members.
3. RULES
1. If you start, please see it through to the end. You must commit to reviewing one book per week for the whole cycle. Don't join if you don't think you can make that commitment.
Note: This group is open to abuse. Author A might be chosen in the first week, get a bunch of negative reviews and decide "Screw this, I'm out of here". Or maybe he/she gets a bunch of positive reviews and thinks, "Great, got what I want, now I'm out of here."
That's not nice!
So we have this safeguard: If somebody does this, any negative (1- or 2-star) reviews they get will be posted. Any positive (3-, 4- or 5-star) reviews they get will be deleted.
2. Books must not be over 250 pages. (An author may choose which of their books they want reviewed and it doesn't have to be one book, e.g. you could ask some members to review one of your books and ask others to review another one of your books.)
3. As a reviewer, you will need to buy the book, but the author must make the book available for 0.99 for a couple of days (Monday and Tuesday).
If you cannot make your book available for 0.99, email a copy to me and I'll pass it on. If you don't want to email a copy, gift the book. If you can't do any of that and don't have any other titles to offer, it gets awkward, so it might be better if you don't join this group.
See EXTRA STUFF below for more thoughts about this.
4. As a reviewer, don't just dwell on the negatives if the book has positives too. Review unto others as you would have them review unto you, i.e. honestly, constructively and fairly. (And don't feel you have to write too much. I received a review recently which said "Great read". I was happy!)
If you're going to give a negative review or mark the book down, it might be good to tell the author how you think the book could be improved. A negative review will probably not be posted, so constructive feedback will make the time spent reading the book worthwhile.
5. As a writer, be mature and willing to accept criticism.
END OF RULES
4. EXTRA STUFF YOU DON'T REALLY NEED TO KNOW
I don't really enjoy the marketing side of writing and scrabbling around for reviews, so this is my attempt to automate the process.
Hopefully if this group works, I'm going to get a bunch of reviews every few weeks (and so are you). Obviously we'll have to work for them (review in return) but that seems fair. At least I don't have to scour boards pleading for people to give up hours of their life to read my obscure book which they never heard of and might not like.
I asked for suggestions about the rules and the way this group works, and everyone had their own preferences. The rules above are the best compromise I could come up with.
Some people objected that they don't want to post another person's review, others said they don't mind and others said they thought it was the way to go.
So the compromise is: when I receive all the completed reviews by email, I'll mix them up a bit and send you a review back to post, but I won't mix them up 100% - you will often end up posting the review you wrote.
(If you have someone else's review and you notice it has grammar/spelling mistakes, feel free to correct them, but don't change anything else.)
The rationale behind this element of anonymity is that no one can be certain who wrote which review, so no one can take revenge on another member for a low-rated review. I don't mean to be negative and suggest lots of people are going to get low-rated reviews or be vengeful, but it's good to take precautions.
About obtaining books, some members liked the 0.99 idea, some people wanted to gift them and be gifted, others pointed out that they might not be able to reduce a book's price because of a recent or upcoming promotion.
So again this was a compromise betweeen different members' preferences. You spend 0.99 on a book every week, but you'll get some of that money back when the others buy your book, and if you get some decent reviews, you'll likely sell more books and might well end up making a profit overall.
Others mentioned about the unfairness of having to read a 200-page book when their book might be 20 pages long. There's really no solution to that without banning people from joining. But look at it in another way - you get a review for writing 20 pages, that other person had to write 200 pages to get a review.
This whole group is just a product of my feeble brain, so it's quite possible that the rules and the way it works could be improved. Feel free to make a suggestion.
NOTE: I amended this post after hearing what various members thought. Some of the posts below are in response to the original rules, so they might not make sense as these posts (below) are now out of date.