Why reviews are the most valuable thing ever

If you're here looking for marketing insight or information about how reviews affect sales or branding or  anything regarding the business part of writing, my fellow SFF Seven folks have got you covered. Just keep reading this week and you'll soak up all the wisdom.

But you won't get much biz wisdom from me. My only thought nugget regarding reviews is THANK YOU. 

Thank you to the people who read my book and said something nice about it. 

Thank you even more to people who read both my books and left reviews for them -- you are my madstone in a very bitey biz.

Thank you to the people who read my books, found something they disliked, and then left a review so that other people who dislike that dislikable thing won't dive into the book and then get disappointed.

Thank you to the people who bought my book and didn't finish it but left a review saying why they DNF'd and at what point. I'm pretty sure you aren't the only reader who was bored or turned off at that spot, and being a reader is like being a writer: it's valuable to know when we aren't alone.

Thank you to that one dude on Goodreads who made some assumptions about my personal sexual promiscuity and relationship with my parents. I'm ... sure leaving that review helped you work through some stuff.

All this to say that yes, reviews are worth it. They are worth your time because they remind me that all this work, all this effort and care and hope and incantation I put into a story is being received. I've shouted my existence into the stars, and someone has replied.

Yes, I heard you and loved your message, you might have said. 

Yes, I heard you and think you're full of crap, you also possibly said. 

Yes, I heard you and you aren't alone, you always, definitely said.

And that has value.

Reviews: Don't Confuse Marketing with Sales

I'm loving the topic this week of "Reviews: Are they worth it?" Mostly because I keep hearing Missy Elliot, and now I want to put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it. (I'm sure if I did, I'd pull my back and break my hip.)

As readers, it likely comes as no surprise that authors are under pressure to amass reviews on leading retail sites and in reader communities (eg, Reddit and Goodreads). Whether it's in hopes of improving our odds at being discovered through word-of-mouth or triggering algorithms to have our book(s) surface at the top of search results, we're all eager to make that next sale. Our great fear is that someone will happen across our book, see it has no reviews, assume it's horribly written, thus not buy it.

Of course, our worst nightmare is that we'll get reviews, but they're mostly negative. 

That's enough to send us rocking in the corner, sucking our thumbs. 

It is too easy to lose sight of reviews being a marketing tool. Marketing not Sales. Big difference. Marketing = Spaghetti Against the Wall. Sales = Revenue. Marketing trends are ever-changing. The current fad is reader-reviews (ten years ago, the trend was blogging). There are many authors who give away their book for free trying to hit a magical and moving target number of reviews that the elusive "they" have defined as being effective. Note: It's a different goal from those authors who list "first in series free" in hopes of enticing new readers to pay full price for the rest of the books in the series. Still marketing, but repeat customer is the goal there not reviews (though reviews are still nice).

Bless the readers who post reviews. We love you. Really. 

So, to the question of the week, "are reviews worth it;" the answer is "depends on the size of the ulcer you're giving yourself trying to gather them." It's okay to ask for reviews, just don't let it become your primary marketing message. Put a "please review" reminder at the end of your book, put it in your newsletter as a footnote, post it monthly-ish on your social media feeds. However, never lose sight of SALES being your primary goal.

As many of us have said over the eight years this blog has been around, the best thing you can do to drive sales is Write the Next Book. Building your backlist is like stocking your store with inventory. The more items you have available, the more opportunity you have to make money.

Book Marketing, et al.

This will be a short post.

Why? becasue I SUCK at book marketing, branding et al.

I'm on Facebook, Twitter, here and on http://jamesamoorebooks.com/  and I have genrefied. I have an Amazon page right here and I'm on Goodreads  right here.

I often report what I'm working on. I also post political rants against the current POTUS/Anti-Christ and lots of cute animal pictures.

Here's all the information on my next book:

preview scene:

So, here's the first scene from BOOMTOWN:

CHAPTER ONE

FROZEN MOMENTS

The Trapper

“There’s something wrong with the world when it’s cold enough to freeze a waterfall.” The trapper spoke to himself, or just possibly his horse, but neither of them responded. The proof of his comment lay above him and to his left, a frozen wall of white ice that only two days before had still been running water.

The cold was all-encompassing, a living thing that seemed to thrive on sucking the heat from the world around man and stallion alike. He called his horse Stomper and it was a massive thing, meant for hauling wagons. The black beast barely seemed to notice his weight or the burden of the sled behind it, but the cold sent plumes of steam from its muzzle with each breath. Covered in the thick coat he’d sewn for it, his stallion looked more like a locomotive than it did an animal. He wouldn’t see his beast of burden and closest living acquaintance killed by the elements if he could help it.

It wasn’t the elements, however, that had done most of the killing in the area. If he had to guess it was Indians. Someone must have driven them half mad if they were responsible for the bodies he kept finding.

The idea had been, as it always was, to shoot enough bison and foxes and wolves to load his sled with furs. Instead, he’d been gathering the dead for the last two days. He didn’t have it in him to leave them frozen to the ground for animals to feast on. His mother would surely rise from her grave and beat his fool head into a new shape if he ever got that callous.

Didn’t much help him get his work done, but there was enough money set aside and as a trapper and hunter it wasn’t overly likely that he’d starve any time soon.

The latest body showed itself on the left side of the trail, and he nodded his head and tugged the reins. Stomper came to a halt and snorted agreeably.

The trapper slid from his saddle with practiced ease and walked over to the latest grisly find. Nine bodies so far, each one cut, shot and in different stages of undress, depending on the sex. There were two women who had likely been of marrying age among the dead. There was also a little girl child and an old woman who should have never headed from the east to the wilds. Only the crone had any clothes on her by the time the murdering dogs were done. The others had been treated as poorly as the whores in San Francisco, and that was poorly indeed.

The man in the snow stared with dead eyes behind thin spectacles. The frost on the lenses hid the color of his eyes and made him look blind as well as dead.

That he was dead was obvious. Even if he’d not been frozen to the ground there were lacerations on his skin and shreds of meat and flesh peeking from under his tattered clothing. Like the waterfall a short way back the trickles of blood had frozen into twists of crimson that hung suspended from his wounds. If he had to guess, the trapper would have told anyone curious that he suspected the man had been dragged behind a horse for a while. His shoes were torn apart—a pity that, as they could have fetched a few cents—and his clothing, thin and fine and no doubt very expensive, had peeled half way from his body during the long trip. Ropes still bound his hands and cut into the flesh of his wrists and forearms. He’d very likely fought hard to get away before his attackers had finished with their job.

“Well, sir, I’m sorry to meet you this way.” He looked the body over again and frowned. Someone, his killers or otherwise, had turned out the man’s pockets and taken everything that might have value. The cloth of his vest was split where his watch fop had been torn away. The derby he’d likely worn at one time was nearby and judging by how clean it was, he guessed it had been dropped by the killer after the fact.

“I reckon we should get to work, old boy.” The wind let out a moan from the nearby trees and sent an additional shiver through him. No one else bothered to reply and he reckoned that was for the best.

He took the axe and pick from the bundle he kept on Stomper’s flank and got to digging. The night before had seen a hard, freezing rain and the body was stuck in a thick caul of ice and mud.

Ten minutes later he had a rope wrapped around both wrists—new rope that had not frozen into the ground—and he tied that to Stomper’s sled before urging his horse forward. The ground gave up its prize reluctantly, and for a moment the trapper thought the corpse would break like a sapling before it finally came free with a crunching sound.

Once uprooted the dead man slithered stiffly across the ice and bounced off two aspen trees before coming to a rest. He slid the body across the ice until he could wrestle the weight onto the back of the sled.

He had leather aplenty and he used it to lash the body on top of the other corpses. 

“Well, sir. You’re the tenth and I pray the last. Let’s see about getting you to Carson’s Point. Might be we can arrange a funeral for you.”

The rain started again, dropping from the sky in a half-frozen state and solidifying as soon as it touched the ground. The sound it made as it rattled to the earth was not unlike a dozen sets of teeth chattering away.

“I’d never wish a good man to hell, sir, but I reckon it just might be warmer at either end of the journey than it is here.”

Cover art and back cover text:

Later today I'm even supposed to have a release date. 

I'm not very good at this self-promotion thing, but I'll keep winging it 

Book Marketing, Author Branding and the Long Game

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is reviews: do they really do any good?

Serendipitously enough, this topic dovetails with something I'd already noted on my list of Things to Discuss, which is author branding and the long game. I'd been thinking about it since I was interviewed last week on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast. Since it aired, I've received a lot of great feedback and appreciation for my "down-to-earth" marketing strategy and advice.

I found that description kind of amusing - because I don't think of myself as "down to earth" in general - but I also get why they say that. I think it's partly because a lot of my marketing strategy is grounded in author branding and the long game.

I'm also thinking, as one does days later with these things, that I didn't say exactly that in the interview and I wish I had.

What does this have to do with reviews and if they do any good? Well, reviews do three things: they increase your visibility (thus discoverability), build your reputation and author brand, and give you a place in the community of readers.

Now, I'm talking about reviews from real people who actually read books. Not the solicited (sometimes paid-for) reviews intended to elevate Amazon ranking. That's the same short-term thinking that leads to spending tons of money on ads to convince people to try your book for .99 cents or "free" on Kindle Unlimited. Authors focusing on that are looking to boost sales for that day or that month, to maximize income before the book becomes stale and no longer makes money.

You may have seen some authors - particularly self-publishing authors who can aggressively track sales or page-reads - talk about how books peak and then trail off to nothing. I can tell you that my books not only DO NOT trail off, they tend to gain sales over time.

That's the long game at work.

I'm also not talking about reviews like Kirkus or Publishers Weekly. I think those can help, but they tend to be aimed at the industry, not actual readers. An exception is Library Journal, which I think a lot of librarians read and then decide to add the book to their collections and recommendations.

I'm mostly talking about the readers and book bloggers. Those who take the time and personal effort - for free and out of love - to review books on their own sites, on BookBub, on Goodreads, and on the retail sites. These are the people who read and discuss books - and recommend them to other readers. We talk about how word of mouth is still the most effective promotion? THIS is one of the key virtual word of mouth marketplaces. Do these reviews do any good?

Yes, yes, and YES.

But, an author has to be willing to build their brand over time, which means putting out quality work that pleases readers. Writers begin their lives as readers (or should, if you're not a scammer), and thus we all know that we associate our reading experience with the AUTHOR. Despite valiant efforts of publishing houses, we don't buy books by the imprint. Arguably, some authors in subscription programs like Kindle Unlimited are counting on the "free reads" brand to bring in readers. But any author who's in the business because they honor storytelling first will know that their reputation as an author is critical - and they invest in making it clear and recognizable.

So, yes - reviews do a lot of good, but only if they build your author brand.

This Difficult Character Drives Other Characters Insane

I think the most difficult character I’ve had to write so far would be the Mawreg, who are the alien Big Bad in my Sectors series. They’ve been present since my first published scifi romance Wreck of the Nebula Dream. I didn’t describe them in too much detail and it‘s been an accepted part of Sectors canon that it drives humans insane to even look at a Mawreg with unshielded eyes. So far, so good.

The Mawreg are the apex predators in the Sectors galaxy and have a number of ‘client’ races serving them, so I’ve been able to describe the Chimmer, the Shemdylann and the Betang as they take part in the action in various novels. The Mawreg remained ominous, mysterious and unrevealed.

But eventually one does need to lift the curtain on the enemy to some extent – and readers had been asking when they might see more of these deadly sentients in the books – so when I had the right plot, in Danger in the Stars, Miriell (who isn’t human) encounters one. Here’s the description:

Miriell swallowed hard and forced herself to endure her first glimpse of a Mawreg.

She could understand why humans might find this creature hard to look at. It was like a hybrid of several beings, or perhaps a group of parasites emerging from a single host. The body appeared to be turned inside out in places, with unpleasantly pulsing, dripping organs and vessels slathered with slimy goo and leaking pustules emitting a foul odor. In another segment of the entity’s structure–the head perhaps?—there were what might have been numerous, giant, faceted eyes, but the components or lenses moved and twirled and morphed so fast Miriell found the effect dizzying and nauseating. She couldn’t get her eyes to focus on the Mawreg’s hindquarters at all. Her vision blurred with each attempt to glance at that part of the alien.

But what fascinated Miriell and drew her away from any thought of the Mawreg’s disconcerting and disgusting physical form were the colors of its being. Unbidden, her power sprang to life and showed her plates of colors in the Mawreg’s aura, sliding across each other to form new hues. Indeed, some of the colors were nothing she had ever seen before, could not begin to name and had no idea what their presence portended. The display, visible only to her, exerted a pull on her senses, and she took a step forward before she’d even realized she was moving.

Later in the book Miriell does battle with a Mawreg in her own fashion, using her empathic powers.

I was satisfied I’d done the best I could to bring these aliens to life. In The Fated Stars I offered a bit more backstory on this issue of humans going insane when looking at a Mawreg.

Larissa swallowed hard. “Another fact you should probably know—most humans can’t even look directly at Mawreg. There’s something about them that can drive a human insane.”

Samell stared at her, even as Pete and Donnie nodded. “When we go on sorties into their camps to rescue people or take the entire operation down, we have to wear helmets with special filter goggles and even then a few guys have lost their minds. Mawreg are bad ass, spooky.”

“And we haven’t got any of those helmets here,” Donnie added. “Not a piece of tech I can whip up from spare parts either.”

“Are you serious? I find this concept hard to grasp—how can merely gazing upon the alien can make a person lose their mind?” Samell’s voice was polite.

“First encounter between our kind and the Mawreg was a peaceful scientific expedition, all excited to have met another spacefaring race,” Larissa said.

“The Peronelle. Learned about it in school, in Sectors history class.” Pete confirmed the tale. “Hundreds of years ago. Luckily the humans already had a few interstellar allies.”

“The Peronelle survivors the Mawreg spared to tell the tale described in gruesome detail how their comrades went insane when forced to watch their hosts. The ship’s AI had vids to corroborate. The vids also showed the Mawreg eating people alive, and conducting horrific experiments on others. Apparently the aliens thought it would frighten us into surrendering and accepting their rule, but all it did was make us determined to do battle every chance we got. No truce, no quarter given.” Larissa sighed. “And the war’s been raging ever since.”

So there you have it – my most difficult character to write. A close second would be Moratiu, the ancient, sentient tree…but I’ll save that for another blog post.

Difficult Characters

Once upon a time, I played a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. Obsessively. I managed to create a character with what I thought was a silly, throw away backstory. But from that silly backstory, she took on a life and a legend of her own. In the midst of it all, the game company claimed that the race to which my toon belonged had never been intended to be serious characters in the game - they'd been designed to be nothing more than comedic relief.

I was offended. Then I came to believe the attitude from the game company was a grave disservice to the race. I mean, look around our world. Are the funniest people not the ones hiding the deepest, most intractable pain? Maybe not always. Sometimes silly is just silly. But in this case, I really felt like the game writers were stuck in an idea rut that short-changed them, the game story, and the character potential I saw in this character and her race.

Then the game company just HAD to piss me off by taking pains to inform players that the game company, not the players, owned the rights to any and all characters within the game. No matter how much time and effort players had put into actually creating characters to flesh out what had amounted to a collection of graphics files. It was, 'Hey! We drew pretty pictures for you, so now we own all the hard work you put into actually breathing life into those pictures! Thanks! Suckers.' No, it's not your imagination. My eyelid really is twitching over this. My reaction eventually amounted to a far less polite version of, 'Oh yeah?? Guess what, you jerks.'

I based a book on the character they told me I didn't own. Won't get into details because a forlorn vestige of the company and the game are still out there in the world, but yeah, while so much has changed between game character and book character that I doubt I could be successfully sued, I have zero interest in finding that out. The annoying thing is that the character and voice that grew so organically out of a game, became really, really difficult to write in a novel. The backstory couldn't be silly because the story arc wouldn't support it. Nor would the emotional arc of a romance. This novel is still stewing while I work on other stuff because while I think I have a story that's true to the spirit of my beloved toon, no one (me or the hero or the heroine) can figure out the climax of this book.

I think the biggest issue is that in a game, nothing has to make sense. You kill bad guys. You take their stuff. There doesn't need to be a why. In a novel, I need a why. I never thought I'd be the one saying this because I am usually ALL ABOUT the why - but the damned whys of this novel and this character I so love are making me want to slam my head repeatedly in a door somewhere.

Maybe I'll go slip into game for a little while. Just for old times' sake. Depending on where I adventure in the game world, it will be just like slamming my head in a door. So there's that, I guess.

Difficulty of bleeding on a page

Writers are told all the time to write what they know, to write what they love. Lord knows I hear that plenty these days. I'm in the midst of retooling my career, figuring out where I want to go from here, and most of the advice has been a mix of frustrating and meh.

But recently I got a slice of perfect advice from a fantasy writer I really respect. He said that years ago he was at a crossroads and wanted to write a deeply personal book, but he was worried that at the time he didn't have the chops to do the story or character justice. He was advised to go ahead and write it, to bleed it onto the page, so he did. I gather it wasn't easy, but he's a finisher, and he did the work. Even though he can see the craft flaws in that book now, he is happy with it because he learned, through the process, to be vulnerable.

I haven't challenged myself so personally yet. I've said all along, I write characters who aren't me because, dude, I am a really boring person--maybe even a shitty person--and ain't nobody want to read a whole book about that girl.

But, what if that inside person, the vulnerable me, is interesting because I hate her so much? If I can learn to accept her and love her and make her into a hero, would that journey be interesting to readers who also struggle with self-confidence?

Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I need to write it anyway. I need to learn how to open my psyche up and let it bleed on a page. Slice, hurt, learn, grow.

Gotta tell you, this is scary stuff, but also kind of ... exciting? Will let y'all know how it goes.

That One Character Who...Gah!

Which of my characters has been the most difficult to write? I could give a Top Ten list from books that haven't been published...primarily because I haven't nailed certain pivotal characters, but that might be cheating.

So, I'll give you the character whose reactions to situations I most often have to rewrite.

Feng, the Phoenix from my Immortal Spy series. Feng is introduced as the antagonist to the protag. Feng is painfully righteous, morally pure, and utterly inflexible. As events unfold, things don't go well for Feng. Things go so poorly that even the most gruesome death would definitely be preferable. Alas, to his great misfortune, he survives thanks to the protag. While his body eventually recovers and he finds common ground with the protag, he suffers from horrific PTSD.

What makes Feng difficult to write is that his PTSD doesn't (and shouldn't) define who he is, but it is a factor in his reactions to situations. It is a question of his reliability in a crisis. What will trigger an episode? How will he respond? How do I responsibly write his management of his mental health without pandering or being dismissive?  Yes, I know, I'm writing fantasy...about a dude who is an all-powerful firebird. Yes, the story is told from the POV of protag with her own mental disadvantages. Still. It is some bad shit when your mind is simultaneously your greatest asset and your worst enemy. Now, I'm not saying I get it right. No, no. I am saying what makes Feng so difficult for me to write is my desire to at least be in the neighborhood of respectful.