Showing posts with label GoodReads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GoodReads. Show all posts

Wednesday 20 November 2013

Just A Thought...

Kate Bush
Cover of Kate Bush
So I've been thinking about this blog thing for a while. I've enjoyed myself over the years (I've been feeding this little fire for over SIX years now and likely written more words for it than I have for my books!), generally amused myself greatly and anecdotally have gathered I have occasionally provided amusement (and irritation) to others.

Nothing like the amusement provoked by the wicked and scurrilous Pan Arabia Enquirer, for instance, with its gigantic, tottering piles of 400,000 page views a month, but I have managed some mild jollity among a small, selective band of discerning blog readers and a much larger troupe of disappointed searchers for more sensible things hornswoggled by Google into emerging here rather than somewhere more useful.

I never had an objective in it all, as such. For someone whose day job revolves around defining communications objectives and the like, it's been refreshing. A little like GeekFest, I suppose it has been an anti-PR activity that has come by sheer error to have some sort of reputational value, although any reputational plus has been balanced by the alarm and calumny of being quite as frank as I have on occasion been in here. What makes it special, as Kate Bush tells us, makes it dangerous.

I don't mean to alarm you, by the way. I'm not jacking it in or anything like that. But I am perhaps going to destroy any vestigial traffic by spending more time on what has become the most intense focus in my life - books. Or more accurately, narrative.

I'm going to start posting book reviews, for instance. I've wasted them over at GoodReads in the same way a TripAdvisor review is wasted - just another voice in the thousands of contributions. I'd rather have 'em here in my own archive, tell the truth. We'll see where that takes us, but if you want to submit your book for review, I wouldn't expect much sugar-coating from around here.

Oh, I'm going to go on slapping Gulf News for being drooling morons and playing with things that pass by on life's conveyor belt and make you wonder quite what it's all about. How could I not? But I'm doing more and more book stuff in my life and I think that's going to be represented here more.

Sorry if that's not good news - I know book posts and the like kill blog traffic more effectively than the Car Eating Carrion Crow of Cephalon Cinque - but it's sort of where I'm headed and I've become quite fond of my blog, so where I'm headed, I guess the blog'll come too - peeing on the lamp posts and sniffing other blog's bums...

That's all folks...

PS: I found an excuse to put a picture of Kate Bush on the blog. My life is complete...
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Sunday 23 September 2012

A Mountain Of Book Reviewers

English: Open book icon
English: Open book icon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Honestly, you've no idea how many book blogs there are out there. After trawling through them for a few hours, they start to morph together into a plastic gloop of Blogger and Wordpress templates, a putty of garish backgrounds and glittering widgets that eventually goes the way of school plasticine and turns into a dull, brownish purple.

Yes, we're in promo mode...

I missed a trick with Olives - A Violent Romance, in that I didn't focus early enough on the global online community. That's partly because I had a printed edition of the book which was targeted at the UAE. Later on, I shifted focus from 'traditional' and Middle-East focused online media to book bloggers and reviewers and had compiled a sizeable database of sites after a while. For Beirut - An Explosive Thriller, which will launch as an online-only book (both ebook and print), that online community is even more important. In fact, it's crucial.

That means trawling through, literally, hundreds of book review blogs to find appropriate reviewers. What makes a book blog appropriate? Here's Alexander's handy ten point book blog selection filter:

1) Is the site well formatted and readable?
Purple 6 point text on a cyan background with ebulliently serifed fonts, illustrations that 'crash' on the page and thousands of buttons, awards and widgets? If you find it hard to read, so will visitors. It just takes a quick check for 7) before we move on.

2) Is it updated?
If the last post was in July, we move on.

3) Is it well written?
I'm not talking about the odd literal, but you're putting your work into someone's hands and accepting their review of it. If they clearly aren't able to express themselves, it's not going to be as smart an investment in time as finding someone who - even if they don't like your work - can effectively reason a conclusion regarding that work. The vast majority of book blogs don't fall into this bucket, avid readers tending to be literate, but there are some that do and I choose to avoid them.

4) Does the site review in your genre?
If the last ten reviews have young men with eight-packs on the covers and titles like Love in Wyoming, I can't quite see Beirut floating the reviewer's boat. Olives was easier in this respect as it did wander into romance crossover territory, but Beirut is a pretty hardcore international spy thriller. A nip into the 'Review guidelines' to check the reviewer's preferences and we can both save ourselves some time.

5) Is the reviewer accepting reviews?
Closed to submissions means just that. Quite a few blogs have put this up as the reviewer drowns in the weight of eager, breathless little books scratching away at their skin. Ignoring it just wastes everyone's time. You can always put these in a separate list to check back in a couple of months. Often you'll find 5) and 2) signal that the blogger has decided to go back to reading for enjoyment rather than being hassled 9-5 by authors shrieking 'review my book!'

6) Does the reviewer accept ebooks?
I can't stress enough how much time and hassle is avoided by reading the review guidelines - and conforming to them. And when a reviewer says no ebooks, they mean it.

7) If not, does the site have significant reach?
For about $8, I can put a review copy in anyone's hands, anywhere in the US and Canada. For about £9.99 I can cover much of the rest of the world via the Book Depository. Now the question becomes how many of these outlays do you want to/can you make? And then, when you have a budget defined, where is it wisest to spend it?

How do you tell whether a blog has reach? That's  whole piece in itself, but comments and followers are a start. Bear in mind these days that Twitter and Facebook form a part of any site's 'reach', but as a rule of thumb few followers, lacking likes and a quiet blog are probably not where you want to spend your bucks.

8) Does the site have reach?
Does it matter? Unless you're eking out your print promo budget because of 7) above, you're looking at the cost of an email or two and a Kindle/epub file. If the blog gets 50 visits a day, that's 50 more people that knew about your book than yesterday. A hundred emails will take you a couple of days to send out, but net you 5,000 eyeballs. Anything above that is bunce. Many book bloggers also post to Goodreads and Amazon, so there are also signficant multipliers there. And, of course, you can share the review with your own followers. So reach be damned!

9) Is there a clear review policy?
Most book blogs have clear review policies that are straightforward and common sense and generally my submission package would conform to these. Where this isn't the case, it's important to reflect the policy and make changes. A personal touch is always appreciated, of course. In a few cases where I've come up against stringent and onerous review policies (such as extensive online forms) I've passed.


10) What's the TBR like?
Most book bloggers have a very long To Be Read list and it's not unusual to see reviews three or even six months out. So the sooner you get out to them, the better.


And what about paid reviews, listings and other services? I avoid 'em like the plague and will continue to do so unless I get some very clear recommendations from writer friends that a given service has worked. And so far I haven't.

If you've got a blog and you'd like a review copy of Beirut, BTW, do just leave a comment or ping me @alexandermcnabb.
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Wednesday 25 January 2012

Amazon Remittance - I Am A Wealthy Man

Vesper @Dukes Hotel, St. James
Image by Ethan.K via Flickr
I'm dumbstruck. I don't know whether to do little jigs, run through the streets crying 'Eureka!' or just make myself a Vesper. Actually, let's face it, it's a no-brainer. Vesper it is.

You remember me mentioning that some of the 'big' moments in this self publishing thing have been the ones you'd least expect? No? Well, they have been. Getting the book from the printers wasn't a 'big' moment for me, sighting my first copy in a shop wasn't, either. But seeing the cover was and seeing Olives - a violent romance on the Kindle for the first time was. And this one is, too. A real wowzer moment.

I've just got my first remittance advice from Amazon. It's not much money, about twenty quid, but that's not the point. I just made money from my books for the first time. People actually went out and paid good money to own the book that over 100 agents turned their noses up at. What's more, people have been reading and enjoying the book. Some have let me know, personally or through reviews on Amazon and GoodReads. Nobody's asked for a refund either.

And now I'm looking at an email that says I made money from my writing.

I am inestimably happy and thought I'd share the joy. I'm off to make the down payment on a 50 metre luxury yacht now...

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From The Dungeons

Book Marketing And McNabb's Theory Of Multitouch

(Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I clearly want to tell the world about A Decent Bomber . This is perfectly natural, it's my latest...