News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #84…
Item: Two new ebooks worth checking out. Recently I reviewed Ellie O’Neill’s Reluctantly Charmed on Bookpleasures (my shortened review of the same ebook is on Amazon). This is from Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone imprint; it’s a delightful mystery, fantasy, and romance that was released on St. Paddy’s day. For all lovers of Irish folklore, to be sure. Also, sometime ago I reviewed Jay Kinney’s The Masonic Myth from Harper Collins (yeah, I read non-fiction too). I’ve recently had opportunity to put some of that knowledge about Free Masonry to use (I also have some personal experience with it) because I’m now reviewing Giacometti and Ravene’s Shadow Ritual, a translation from the French, for Le French Book. It’s a thriller involving old Nazis and, you guessed it, Free Masons. Look for that review on Bookpleasures—coming soon!
Item: Speaking of book reviews. I’m always surprised that authors don’t do more reviewing. While I’ve seen one- or two-line endorsements by big-time authors (they’re usually a negative for me, by the way—I’ve never read or reviewed a book because Lee Child or Douglas Preston endorses it), I have this perception that authors are reluctant to lower themselves to the level of readers and give something back to the community of readers and writers by reviewing other authors’ books. There was a time Amazon frowned on this, and maybe still does—an absurd policy, to say the least.
First, many Amazon reviews, whether written well-meaning readers or by friends or family members, are often too short to convey useful information about the book. An author, especially the midlist or indie author, appreciates, or should appreciate, more feedback beyond the “atta-boy” and “atta-girl” or “this stinks!”—at least I do. Many reader-reviewers do an excellent job, of course, but authors who are reader-reviewers presumably know a little more about writing mechanics and are quicker to spot a badly written book, or flaws in a good one. Second, they presumably have an idea about what readers like to read, at least in their genres, so their reviews could be of immense help to the reading public (I count myself in this last group, but maybe other authors don’t read anyone else).
I try to give something back to the community of readers and writers. I review mostly for Bookpleasures—my reviews there tend to be longer than anything you’ll find on Amazon (even the reposts of my reviews that reviewees can ask for; I have to shorten them for Amazon because of their silly 500-word limit). My reviews are also honest. You can examine my reviews on Bookpleasures—I give praise when praise is justified, but I don’t hold back on my criticism when I have to slog through bad writing and poor editing and formatting, especially in the indie case where we all must struggle to vanquish that stereotype that indie is inferior. That defines an honest review.
You can receive a free Kindle version of any of my ebooks in exchange for an honest review. (All my ebooks could use a few more reviews.) This is SOP in the indie world. Help us out and write some good reviews, please (good in the sense of expressing your opinion in more than a Twitter tweet). Afraid of putting your name out there? Use an alias. Amazon also provides review guidelines. Indie authors generally provide hours of good entertainment to readers for less cost than a movie (today’s movies often provide less than two hours of bad entertainment). They pass on their savings (see why below) to readers. Please return the favor.
Item: Book advertising. Reviews are generally considered a path to name recognition in the indie publishing world—the belief is that a good review is an author’s best advertisement. I posit that this belief is there by default: most indie writers, yours truly included, just don’t have time or budgets for TV and newspaper ads, cross-country book tours, drink-and-dine book launches, incestuous endorsements, and so forth. One of the books I recently reviewed for Bookpleasures, Harlan Coben’s The Stranger, had a full-page ad in the NY Times last Tuesday. By the way, you probably won’t find my review quoted by Harlan’s publisher—it was an honest review and I found a few flaws. (Of course, Harlan is hardly an indie writer, so maybe the emphasis is on “few”). Still, at the time I wrote this post, Harlan’s new book only had six reviews on Amazon—mine was generally positive, so the publisher missed a bet. Just sayin’….
While the above sounds like sour grapes, I’ll go out on a limb here: these huge advertising expenditures by Big Five publishing conglomerates have two serious flaws: The first is that they come across as hype. Readers are smart—they know a book isn’t good just because the ad says it is, any more than a car is good because the ad says it is, and an endorsement in the ad from another “major author” or Kirkus or anyone involved with traditional publishing sounds like country-club self-promotion (Kirkus’ blurb was at the top of Harlan’s book’s list, but the most amusing blurb was an endorsement by Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, both a poorly written novel and poorly scripted movie—if I didn’t know Coben better as an author, that would have sent me away immediately!).
The second and most important flaw from the readers’ point of view is that readers pay for those ads in the high prices for their books. Books aren’t high-price items like cars, even at Big Five prices, but publishers, and occasionally authors, make money on the number of sales. Harlan’s ebook (Kindle) is listed on Amazon at $10.99, a bargain compared to some Big Five ebooks, but maybe this is the new price point after the battle with Amazon was lost. No matter. When indie ebooks are selling between $2.99 and $4.99 for the most part, with less formulaic and more original plots and characters for the readers’ enjoyment, you just know traditional publishing is asking the readers to pay for all that advertising. Don’t do it! Buy indie.
Item: Revisiting the Gardner heist. My readers know that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist figures prominently in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” ebook, The Collector. While that mystery is about a lot more than stolen art, I was interested in a news item in the arts section of the NY Times a week ago Wednesday (while their biases have influenced their coverage of publishing, it doesn’t seem to have done the same for the art world, but maybe that’s an incorrect perception). According to the article, if you go to the museum’s website, you can see the objets d’art that were stolen, estimates of their current value, and so forth. I haven’t looked yet, and it’s because the artworks haven’t been recovered (i.e. I doubt my laptop’s screen will do them justice). They’re basically priceless now; “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” by Rembrandt, for example, originally purchased for $150,000, is now estimated to be worth $150,000,000. In my novel, Chen and Castilblanco, the FBI, and Scotland Yard have ideas about who took it—all fiction, of course…or is it?
Item: Fantastic Encores! I’m taking some of the short stories in the “What Happened to Those Characters Series” (see “Steve’s Shorts” in this blog) to make a bargain collection of stories involving characters from “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and Doctor Carlos stories. In a short time, these will disappear from the blog archives, so read them now if you want free reading. Or, you can just wait, because they will be completely revised and re-edited for the collection. Combined with Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java, a collection that introduces Detectives Chen and Castilblanco, readers can experience characters from both ends of one timeline in my fictional universe. Did I say bargain prices? I won’t give them away, but I might sell both collections for $0.99—that’s a dollar menu with more meat in it than you’ll find in bargains from a certain fast food establishment! Coming soon.
In elibris libertas….
