Harnessing the community

[tinkerdan]

I hate the star systems. Planetary orbits are fine...
Really though the star system doesn't work and I read as many of the reviews as I can.
1 star and 5 star work for me because they are easy to sort.
The short ones can be thrown out and the long ones are meant be be read.
Two things help sort those.
Any time someone says don't waste your time reading this or you don't want to read this book: then I find I don't want to read the review.
The same can be said of the opposite ie: you must read this.

I don't mind the glowing reviews but I want substance with some indication that they read the book and some of their reason they liked it and not the reasons they think I might not like it.
Also I want honesty which devolves to I'm not blind and this book has grammar problem; but those did not bother me.
Or Grammar problem grate on my nerves so keep that in mind while you read my rant against this author.

That much said I've noticed in my searches on Amazon that when I search for specific genre there are a number of idiosyncrasies in their system that I have to butt up against.
Amazon often will not allow the search to give me all the results.[they have some sort of cap on the results]
There seemed to be little reasoning in the search results and to the best of my knowledge in trying to work it out I found.
Often books with high sales ratings would drift to the top
Often books with high star rating would drift to the top
Big name authors float to the top
Big name publishers float to the top
and often some weird non-related book would be inserted with seeming randomness

The important part of this is that helping an author might be best described by buying the book and giving high star rating. As those seem to be two things that float work closer to the top.
So when you like a book but only give it a three star rating because you reserve the 4 and 5 stars for exceptional work (or traditionally published authors) Then this could push them back to a spot where a person searching would have to be pretty aggressive about the search to find the book.

This is why I dislike the star system and will read as many reviews as I can stand to read before I buy.
So the best thing would be to concentrate on giving a concise review of what worked and didn't work for you and then star it appropriate to how you believe you should star it and at least when I get to that novel, I'll have something to read that will help.

I don't really think that this forum needs anything more aggressive than the current critique thread they have now.
Anything else,I think would lack in politeness on the same scale as anything you might think to gain.
And I'm not sure what you might hope to gain.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I'm going to poke a little spanner in the works here I'm afraid guys.

First while I appreciate the idea of chrons helping chrons authors out through reviews etc, it does seem a little shady to me. And as an author I would not want such a thing. It would make me feel somewhat like a used car salesman. My thought is I write a book, people should buy it if it looks good to them, review it fairly - one star to five, and hopefully enjoy it. I do not want my books purchased or reviewed by people simply because I belong to the same online communities.

The other problem is that I doubt reviews sell books. Perhaps they were more effective a few years ago - I don't know. But there are so many books out there with poor star averages that I suspect people don't actually care. There are also threads on places like Kindleboards which run along the lines of "this book has terrible ratings but sells oodles - how?"

And speaking from my own perspective as a reader, I can honestly say I don't make my purchase decisions on reviews for the most part. Like most people I am a shallow person when it comes to these things. I see a book, like or don't like the cover, read the blurb, maybe do a "look inside" and largely make my mind up on these things. Reviews I see more as helping to confirm my thoughts about purchase - and sometimes I buy books with really poor reviews.

As to the five stars / one star thing, I rarely look at the number of stars a reviewer has given when reviewing a book. I instead look at the length of the review, and most often overlooked - the review title.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[ratsy]

Greg, I think that sometimes the volume of reviews can sway people. If you see a self-published book with 1,000+ reviews, that means a lot of people read that book, and over a 1,000 felt strongly about it to leave a review, good, bad or neutral. For well known authors, I couldn't care how many reviews or what they are, because I've already decided if I want to read them or not.

For the $0.99-$2.99 Ebook, I would be more interested to see how many people were moved by that book.

And for the OP, I think the idea is we promote each other, whether that is buying the book, retweeting on twitter, sharing on FB, or reviewing on Amazon/Goodreads. I don't think any one was suggesting we should just give each other 5Stars with out reading the books. I have left reviews for Chrons authors, but I really did enjoy the books I read.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Certainly I don't think that anyone should buy a book that doesn't look like it would appeal just because one belongs to the same online community. But if the book does look appealing, why not support someone you know -- someone whose books you might never have heard of except for the community -- by buying their book? (Is that different from buying the book because you saw it advertised, or because Amazon thought you would like it because of some of the other books you've bought? I don't see a difference. It's just another source of information.) After that, if you write a review it should be an honest review. But what kind of review you write and how you hand out stars is not exactly the same thing. Saving 5 stars for the most wonderful book that you ever read in your entire life has the same effect on all of the authors whose books you review -- famous, not famous, people you know, people you have never met, people who know people you know, etc. -- but of course with the more popular books and authors that effect will be diluted.

If regularly giving out 3 star reviews to books we actually do like very well and think are quite good means that we are doing nothing to bring those books to others' attention -- therefore not helping sales, therefore not helping to assure that the writer will publish more books we would probably like as much -- then perhaps it is time to recalibrate how we hand out stars. Or not. But at least something to think about. Maybe 4 or 5 stars just means, "Hey, read my review, and I'll tell you why I liked this book."

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@psychotick - I wasn't suggesting that we all go out and buy each other's books, or throw out reviews on them. I would never suggest that, or solicit for them. What I wanted to know in the OP was, if I wanted to support the community - and I do, but I support other communities I'm in, too - what is the most effective ways to do that. That's a long way from being a shady car salesman.

@tinkerdan - no one was suggesting something more aggressive. It's simply asking the question of what's useful. The answer will vary for each person, and that's exactly as it should be, from supporting lots to nothing. And each is fine. I'd just like to know, if I do support, that my efforts are useful.

 

[Parson]

Maybe 4 or 5 stars just means, "Hey, read my review, and I'll tell you why I liked this book."

Maybe, but I doubt it. I know that when I hand out stars my intention is (or at least was, I'm still pondering this):

5* -- One of the half dozen or so best books I've read to this point in my life.
4* -- A good solid book with a lot to offer someone who shares my tastes in novels.
3* -- A book worthy of consideration and more likely to be enjoyed than not.
2* -- Not horrible but certainly not a recommended book.
1* -- One of the worst books I've ever read.

As for the review I try to say what I liked and/or disliked in a nutshell without any (hopefully) spoilers.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

To clarify: that "Hey read my review" in my previous post was meant to be the equivalent of raising your hand in class and waving it around, as opposed to waiting for the teacher to call on you at random.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Only Hermione does that?

 

[tinkerdan]

Sorry that should have been directed @Dave::

@tinkerdan - no one was suggesting something more aggressive. It's simply asking the question of what's useful. The answer will vary for each person, and that's exactly as it should be, from supporting lots to nothing. And each is fine. I'd just like to know, if I do support, that my efforts are useful.

:: for his tongue in cheekiness.

 

[mgilmour]

Let's cut to the chase here....
The problem that many self-publishing authors have (me included) is less about the quality of our work (I hope this is me) and more about cutting through to the masses (definitely me). Let's work under the assumption that we're all brilliant writers and that we've written a masterpiece. I hate to say it but publishing is very different from writing.....

We need to do as much as possible to help each other out. Here's a few thoughts:
1. I've already setup a place so that self-published and traditionally published authors can add their website addresses etc. This will mean that there is a central repository of great authors..... One of the problems that we have is that it's hard to find authors like the people here. I have now "met" a number of you online but I have no idea what books you have published....I'd love to know!
2. I'm happy to reciprocate links to other author's websites from my own. At the moment we don't seem to be doing this and it's potentially lost traffic/sales. Anything above doing nothing has got to help out.
3. Where is there a list of scifi books about to be released? That would be awesome.....maybe another project for my programming skills LOL!
4. Let's share on what's been a waste of money. There appear to be a lot of sharks out there that want to "promote" your book....where's the list of "bad guys" to watch out for. Where's a list of the good guys as well.
5. What marketing and promotional activities have really worked for you? I'm trying to do some interesting things such as put additional content that relates to my book on my website but only make it available to registered users.
6. What are the sites that you can pour a lot of time into that are actually a waste of time? Which ones produce results?
7. Out of the major advertising networks (google, facebook, bing and yahoo) which one actually provides a return on the investment?
8. How do you get reviews? What strategy has worked? (this is not Amazon star reviews)
9. At what stage should you move from Amazon only to broader distribution?
10. What's really worked well for a launch party?
11. Did you find that the investment in a promotional video worked? Do you do video author video casts?
12. As your readership expands has it been useful running online webinars?
and the list goes on.....and on......and on.....

During the last week I ended up building an online tracking system so that I can get answers to some of the above questions. I now know exactly how many times a particular promotional piece has been displayed and clicked. I don't know who has clicked (ie. privacy) but I do know that something was clicked. Ultimately, this should then lead me to the ROI answer per marketing channel. I'm happy to share with the community what I've found over the next few weeks....

So the above was a little bit of a rant.....but IMHO it's really, really important stuff for us all to work through. Feel free to PM me any questions or ideally, post here so that we can keep the discussion flowing. Hopefully I will reach my 100 posts soon and I will be able to provide links to some of the things that I've built so that I can get some feedback and ideally, help other members out.

 

[Dave]

Sorry that should have been directed @Dave::
:: for his tongue in cheekiness.

I understood what @springs was saying in the OP. Although I'm not a struggling author myself, I see the benefits of the fantastic mutual support group going on here and I'm sure that @springs would agree that it helped her get where she was today - a very recently published author with her own Jo Zeberdee forum here.

It is certainly not a case of blindly promoting each others work. The Critiques forum is tough love from very critical friends, and the Writing Group even more so.

Everyone is welcome to join in if they give back to this community the same, or more than they expect in return. It is sad that a few people only expect to take from this community, or they cannot accept that criticism, when freely given, and feel a need to complain about it elsewhere.

And @mgilmour has a good point too. Marketing costs a lot of money. Feedback on whether it is value for money costs even more.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Let's cut to the chase here....
The problem that many self-publishing authors have (me included) is less about the quality of our work (I hope this is me) and more about cutting through to the masses (definitely me). Let's work under the assumption that we're all brilliant writers and that we've written a masterpiece. I hate to say it but publishing is very different from writing.....

But that assumption is a dangerous one. Because the perception of many people (and I'm guilty of this one) is that too much sp has a poor quality of work and that impedes cutting through to the masses. This isn't fair to many excellent sp, but there it is. The market was flooded a few years ago with anyone and everyone chucking their trunked novels and what not onto kindle and much of it was unedited or lacked basic storytelling skills around info dumping and pov and what not.

Until you can convince me that you have written a masterpiece I'm going in with a sceptical frame of mind. So rather than focusing on the promotion of getting a work out there, instead should the focus be on how to evidence that it isn't just another not-quite-polished sp work. And so often, once I get convinced I click to look inside and go no further because of the quality of the work.

So, for me, if I were sp my first question would be, actually - is it any good? And I'd ask questions around that first of all - by getting crits, by using at least strong betas, and some editing - before I'd even think of getting it out. I've seen sp here and elsewhere who never seem to use crits that, when I click on the book, I walk away because, actually, a single thread on crits would have pointed out so may basic errors. That's their choice, of course. Many writers get pleasure from writing and don't want to get bogged down in perfection, and that's fine. But it does mean that, actually, the quality of your work might be a problem, and you can't see it (I always think my stuff is great until my writing group look at it....) or that others perceive it as a problem.

I understood what @springs was saying in the OP. Although I'm not a struggling author myself, I see the benefits of the fantastic mutual support group going on here and I'm sure that @springs would agree that it helped her get where she was today - a very recently published author with her own Jo Zeberdee forum here.

Absolutely. The chrons took me in as a green writer with nothing but enthusiasm and a zillion questions. It's not possible for any single human to give back that same support. But recipricioty is, in my mind, what makes a community.

But, what is that support? I'm visible at the moment, it's easy to see where support can be given. But five years ago, the support I needed was honest crits an help with science, and I got it. Later it was more bespoke crits, and I got them. Query readthroughs, contract advice, rejection cake, etc etc - at each stage I needed different support and it was there. And, now, when people ask the questions or for that kind of support, it's good that I cascade down the support and advice I got.

That's what this thread is hopefully about - not please buy my book and review it, but instead - what support do people need, what stage are they at, how can we give it? And, frankly, the end product is only one aspect of that.

Ps is it possible to break a link by overclicking on it? I could find out....

 

[hopewrites]

Quick interjection of an idea on how we can help each other, then I'll go back a page to finish reading the debate on the ratings system.


One thing I did was to pester the local book shops that we're getting my money anyway into carrying Authors I liked (Ether Chron members or those authors suggested to me by them). When they ask you "Did you find everything you were looking for?" it's not an idle question (ok for the cashiers who would rather be home watching telly it is, but not the ones that actually do their job and report back to their super what people are looking for and not finding) they want more of your money, and telling them what you want to spend it on will help you both out.


kk, now I'm backing up to finish reading this Star Studded debate.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

But, what is that support? I'm visible at the moment, it's easy to see where support can be given. But five years ago, the support I needed was honest crits an help with science, and I got it. Later it was more bespoke crits, and I got them. Query readthroughs, contract advice, rejection cake, etc etc - at each stage I needed different support and it was there. And, now, when people ask the questions or for that kind of support, it's good that I cascade down the support and advice I got.

This is so true. I am at the point Springs started from. Lots of enthusiasm, determination and questions but no experience and few skills. The people on this forum have helped me beyond measure and in much less than a year on here I have learned so much. One of the first things I learned, through the critiques section, was how much I had to learn. That in itself was a great lesson.

If I ever get good enough to be a published author, whether SP or trad, I hope I will be able to feed my experiences back into the mix to help other aspiring authors. That is what this place is all about.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

is it possible to break a link by overclicking on it?

Use a script or the mouse button wears out.
If you run the script on 10,000 PCs or have a LOT of friends clicking on the link, then that's DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.

 

[hopewrites]

I completely agree with you @Kerrybuchanan . That is what this place is about.
I also like @springs latest post which brings in more aspects than just the marketing end, so I'm glad @mgilmour started out with an assumption that sparked a broader list. I get that what he was getting at with that assumption was that even if your work is good it's hard to get it out there, and his marketing list is impressive to me.

I've often wondered (and I'll be honest fretted) about my usefulness to this (or any) community. When I get really low, I remember that @Gary Compton started his business to answer just such a question, and then I feel I can broaden my field of usefulness beyond the narrow scope I was trying to box it into. I'm pretty disconnected from social medias so for the most part my sharing would just feed right back here. Oh I'll do the odd word of mouth thing; like asking the local shop if they have Such-And-Such book by So-And-So, or mention to co-workers over mindless menial tasks books I've enjoyed. But getting word out into the world is not really my strong suit, so I wonder and worry.

I do however love a good read. (Being down to one laptop between the 5 of us, my reading often comes at the expense of sleep atm, but I know it wont last and has been worth every moment.) I even set up an encrypted email address so I could offer to give my opinion to those who wish it. I think if I felt my reviews would do any good I'd offer up more of them, but I don't know where I would put them.

I'm guilty of being that review on Amazon that says "arrived on time in stated condition," more a review of the seller than the product; having never really used their review system for more information than that. I'll remember to be more salient in my reviews there from now on though.

I think the thing about harnessing the power of any community is to encourage its members to find what they are already passionate about, and then find a way to apply that to the communities needs/wants/states goals.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

that review on Amazon that says "arrived on time in stated condition," more a review of the seller than the product;

Flaw in Amazon and eBay.
Review / Feedback should only be the product inherent feature, there should be a separate feature for delivery/condition/communication.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think Parson has got it spot-on.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Messing around today on Twitter and trying to be supportive, I might have accidentally un-tweeted some retweets I did before.

I'm not sure I can be trusted with social media ...

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm not sure I can be trusted with social media ...

I remain to be convinced any human can, especially the ones that provide the service.