The Self-Styled Reviewer

By Stella Atrium
7/23/12
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In this age of self-published writers, we also have the self-styled reviewer.

Review opportunities are circulated for many products – Consumer Reports on cars, Angie’s List for home repairs, comparisons of cellphones or ereaders when deciding which to buy.

We also review work in many stages of development – plans for remodeling the house, a change of direction in the middle of travel, the first draft of a short story on Reddit, peer editing before marketing, focus groups to test how key phrases play in the public discourse.

For this blog, though, I want to look at the reviews from readers for self-published books. I have a friend who manages a blog and is seeking to become a reviewer of romance stories or chick lit or adventures for kids. She asked me what writers are looking for so she can build a fan base for her reviews.

I believe her instincts are good. Write a review that each audience can use – the writer, the reader, the publisher, the fellow reviewer, the client who may re-publish your review on a digest blog.

Here are some basics:

1)  Work in a genre you prefer – I met a fan of romance who read my fantasy novel and complained there weren’t enough fairies or kissing.

2)  Get the facts straight – What genre, length, style, and appeal?  By appeal I mean is the book targeted to the GLBT audience, or does the story include erotica? Mention who may want to avoid the book as well as who may find the read rewarding.

3)  Include a two-sentence overview of the story – pithy and descriptive. NO SPOILERS.

4)  Mention where this book resides in a series or in the arch of the writer’s career, if applicable. Relate the story to previous work, such as  “more geared to a younger audience”, or “scarier even than his last novel”.

5)  Act as a confidant to the reader. What will she like if you pass along the book to her? “Don’t read this story on Sunday because you’ll be up all night and miss work the next day.”

6)  Think about the ways the review is used later. Include a few shorter sentences that can be quoted by the writer, or by Amazon, or by a blog that re-publishes reviews.

What to avoid:

1)  Some reviewers embrace the need to be critical. Suggestions for improvement are fine, but avoid the “this is how I would do it” tone. Include sugar with the vinegar.

2)  Mention your qualifications, but don’t make the review about you. Your emotive responses are a good way to connect with the reader who looks to you for advice. Your ideas for where you met the writer once at a sci-fi convention belong in a profile article, not a review.

3)  It’s okay to show your smarts by comparing the story to Homer or JK Rowlings. However, don’t speak in that complaining voice. “It wasn’t what I expected,” or “it took too long to get started.” Nobody knows your expectations, or cares.

4)  Avoid a blow-by-blow analysis. Readers want to know if they should invest time and money, not how Part II opens in a different voice. A book review for your 8th grade teacher had to show that you read the whole book.  We aren’t in school anymore.

5)  It’s great to list what was irritating or inconvenient such as too many character names or sudden time changes. Personal attacks, however, don’t serve anybody. “I was looking forward to this book, but was so disappointed” can be damning to the writer, but also damages your ability to find the next writer willing to solicit a review.

6)  Remember that readers spend about 60 seconds on your review, so provide a strong opening and write sparingly. Edit the sentences for any ideas that don’t serve the theme or the constructive criticism.

You will know you have succeeded when readers become fans and when writers solicit you for a review of a new work.

The GoodReads giveaway has ended for July.  540 poeple requested a copy of fantasy novel SufferStone, and 382 people requested a copy of the sequel HeartStone.

Thanks for all who participated!

Watch this space for more opportunities to win a paperback copy of the first two novels in the Dolvia Saga.  And remember, Book III titled StrikeStone is due out in January 2013!

Visit my Good Reads page here.

Better Than "Used to Be" for Self-Publishers

by Stella Atrium
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Last week a self-publisher complained to me that the lag-time between a GoodReads giveaway and posted fan reviews on Amazon was three weeks.  I turned away to hide my smirk.  I supposed it's true that we're so spoiled by the internet, we don't remember how it used to be. 

A decade ago I trusted a small publisher to produce a paperback fantasy novel I wrote. Turns out, he was really a printer masquerading as a publisher with no press release plan or distribution plan.  The weight fell on me to get the word out.

I did research and surfed the web for compatible sites and posted articles about writing and even a "glass bead game" that asked readers to buy the book.  This was before FaceBook in the days of listserv — remember listserv?

I attended sci-fi conventions and traveled to bookstores in the Chicagoland area and staged and attended author appearances.

I begged friends to lend support at my author appearance at the local and famous bookstore where the proprietor could boost my contacts inside the industry.  Except it rained cats-and-dogs that night and I felt sorry for the four friends who did make it to the event, late and drenched.

My efforts went nowhere.  It used to be that a self-promoter expended time and treasure and never reached the intended audience. Listed are a few memories that are burned into my mind.

1)    Introvert at Tradeshow — Did you ever see a booth at a trade show inhabited by a painfully shy writer who spoke to three people the whole day?  I have.

2)    Author Appearance with No Fans — Did you ever see an author at Borders seated alone at a table with stacks of her books and a blank expression of defeat? I have.

3)    Retail Marketing to Bookstores — One writer told me he boosted sales by driving up the California coast visiting bookstores for a personal pitch to owners to place 4 books on the shelves of each stop. An E for effort, but the price of gasoline makes this adventure prohibitive — even if the retail stores are still there.  A hit-or-miss method at best.

4)    Book Signings at Conventions — Writers hate this duty and function like turtles out of the shell. I count Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Jordan in this number. Writers often drink to get past the dread, so they function like hungover shell-less turtles at the morning signing, drinking copious amount of water.

5)    Regional Conventions — Did you ever attend a regional convention where you negotiated a giveaway of your book as part of the "fan appreciation" bag, only to discover the 80 attendees preferred stories about zombies and were really there to get laid?  I have.

6)    Listings on Industry Websites — These were accomplished using a form with no personal contact and no acceptance of connected blogs or Amazon listings.  Some of these still hover online, static and aging and misleading.

7)    Fan Websites — These genre lovers accepted articles and shameless self-promotion to boost traffic by adding your fans.  Except your fans and hers together came to five, including your mother.

8)    Getting into the Pipeline — Used to be... All promotion was accomplished with paperbacks, so each event included shipping a case of forty books to the hotel that hosted the convention, and then shipping them home again. 

9)    Managing Remainders — Did you ever work with a printer who wanted to be certain the check cleared before he shipped the books, even at 40% off?  Did this same printer dump remainders on the market so they hung around for three years at $1.89 sold by resellers on Amazon?  I have. 

10)     Tardy Reviews -- Did you ever find a complimentary review of your novel three years later by a respected reviewer on LibraryThing who must have picked up a remainder book?  Guess what...  that happened to me too!

So don't bring your complaints here that GoodReads or Twitter or LibraryThing aren't working for you.  Industry connections today are accomplished without shipping cases of books to neighboring states, and without leaving the house. 

Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.

Self-Publishers: Pricing for Hardbacks

by Stella Atrium
6/12/12
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So I went to purchase the textbook for a freshman course to write a syllabus for fall term.  I know textbooks are obscenely overpriced, so I was expecting to pay $35.  The university bookstore wanted $65 for the reader and $87 for the handbook.  I was appalled at the greed.  These books were required and guaranteed to sell, so where's the risk to the publisher that justifies a higher retail price?

By comparison, for those of you who only open free ebooks, I bought a handbook for Wordpress online for $35 – but it teaches how to use Wordpress!

Once a friend was moving to another state and giving away whatever he was not willing to drag along.  In the pile was a complete set of hardback copies of Harry Potter, except Book 3 was missing.  I asked him about Book 3 and he said the cat threw up on it. The set has no value if it’s not complete. It’s an artifact of history more than a repository of the living truth.

When I was young – in the previous century – I owned Norton editions of university books that we treasured and displayed to show our smarts. I held onto the valuable ones such as Martin Esslin’s Theater of the Absurd.  The price printed on the back (I just looked) is $14, which I’m certain I thought was outrageous at the time.

Book publishers are experiencing hard times, and we should feel bad for them, right?  Just like we should feel bad for Usher and JayZ because new singles are available on iTunes for 99¢.

Book publishers are pricing themselves out of business.  They set the retail price high so Amazon can offer a discount, and so publishers get the investment back from the naïve author who buys HIS OWN book for HIS OWN marketing efforts.

No wonder epub is expanding and Smashwords is a global marketplace. My point of view is that publishers get what they deserve.  I know this stance doesn’t make me popular, but I’m not the one who set hardcover copies of my fantasy novel at $32.95.  Not a soul in the world will pay that, especially since the ebook is listed on Amazon at $5.28.

I didn’t want to print hardback copies of the fantasy novel, and argued with the publisher to drop that option, but hardbacks were included in my “package”.

Supposedly, the existence of the hardback version of my novel makes me a legitimate writer.  Raspberries.

I lost the argument, and Amazon is winning the conflict.  The writer waits on the sidelines for sanity to return to the marketplace.  But then, I’m also waiting for my balloon mortgage payments to be ameliorated.

I'm a writer, and I want the publishing industry to succeed. I want the consumer to believe he got a good deal, and to become a fan, and to buy the next book in the series.

But I hang my head these days when I see how each group grabs profits at the expense of the very people who should be partners or colleagues. Is this any way to run a business?

I'm called cynical at the dinner table.  Am I the only one?


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Self-Publishers: The Problems with Statistics

by Stella Atrium
6/5/12
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I had a screaming fight one time with my brother about which brought in the most money – Chicago sports franchises or Chicago museums.  My stubborn stance was that museums had long hours and no off-season.  He insisted that one need only look at the stadiums and know sports fans live here.  

Chicago is home to great sport franchises – Chicago Cubs (go Cubs!), White Sox, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Bears, Chicago Blackhawk and more.  Then we have the college teams including DePaul Blue Demons (yeah, Demons!).

Chicago is also home to world-class museums – The Art Institute (of which I am a graduate), The Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, The Planetarium, The Museum of Science and Industry – and those are just the ones along Lake Shore Drive. 

So… which brings in the most money? Care to vote?

Of course, I wouldn’t blog about a fight that I lost – dead giveaway.  The museums bring in half again as much money as sports in Chicago.

Statistics can be surprising.  Before computers were ubiquitous enough to compile cross-platform statistics, information was gathered in a more casual manner.  An urban legend holds that for music lists, compilers called their favorite stores along the East Coast and asked the store owner what was selling.  Of course, the music store owner named his favorite artists as best-selling – in rock, funk, classical, rap, or easy listening genres.  When the real statistics were published for the first time in the late 1980s – Garth Brooks outsold them all.

Here’s a caution for self-publishers.

Statistics that include all ebooks for a quick look at what’s selling are impacted by the fact the romance novels outsell all other genres.  The most successful indie ebook writers/marketers are women, because the biggest fan base is women who read romance.

For non-fiction writers, maybe with a story about the struggles of raising a child with cancer, do you really want to follow the methods used to sell romance? Racy cover, short paragraphs, paced story with few surprises, long backlist for branding.

For fantasy writers, do you really want to follow the methods used for selling Hunger Games?  If you have read the hype, but not the story, it’s about teenagers killing each other for sport.

My publisher tried to sell me a module where my new release HeartStone sits on THEIR website in a colorful page with bells and whistles about searching for favorite characters and tweeting friends for which page you’re currently on.  The sales person – selling me – said more than once: “This is how Hunger Games did it.”

Yes, and Nicole Kidman and I have the same color hair.  So why aren’t I married to a country-western star?

Here’s an alternative method of developing a fan base.  Look at what books are successful in your genre.  Non-fiction is especially treacherous for follow-the-leader because books for marketing that reach out to confused self-publishers sell almost as well as romance.

Fantasy writers should look at the successful marketing strategies of Robin Hobb (Farseer Trilogy and more) and Lois MacMaster Bujold (Curse of Chalion and more), for example.  Brandon Sanderson used this method, in part.  He’s from Australia but joins the conversations on Reddit where Hobb and Bujold are certain to appear.  He piggy-backs on their fan base to promote his similar works.

I like Mistborn by Sanderson. I like Theft of Swords by Sullivan.  I watch them for marketing techniques and to puzzle out what might work for me.

I’m not making my hair black, though, to fit into that group.  It’s me and Nicole Kidman all the way on that score…

The Middle Story of a Trilogy

by Stella Atrium
5/25/12
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Consider for our example The Lord of the Rings in movie form.  The Fellowship of the Ring got all the acclaim, and The Return of the King got all the awards.  But The Two Towers (with the walking trees and the assault on Isengard), um… not so much.

I’m aware of this odd pattern with the middle story carrying much the weight, but none of the praise. So for HeartStone: Book II of the Dolvia Saga, I went the extra mile to secure a Kirkus Review and also petitioned some friendly GoodReads reviewers to look over ARC versions of the story.

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The complete paragraphs provided by Kirkus Reviews are below, and one GoodReads reviewer said this:

“The plot of HeartStone revolves around several offworld characters, including Dr. Edna Edwina Greensboro, Lieutenant Michael Peter Shaw, and Dr. Henry Beecham, in addition to Dolviet tribal members, leaders, and outcasts.
      Readers will be reacquainted with old friends and like them try to determine who is truly the enemy of Dolvia, a new one or the same enemy with different tactics.  Either way, the tribal people of Dolvia are the pawns, along with those who choose not to see or act or those who are just naive.

         As an orphaned child of an offworlder and a Dolviet, Brianna Miller is condemned to be an outcast among the tribes.  Yet, she strives to better herself so that one day she may travel to Earth, the planet of her father's birth.  With the gifts that Dolvia has provided her, the generosity and teachings from the various characters, the pain that she endures, the compassion she feels for others, and the risks she takes, Brianna prepares for a future...a future she will choose for herself!

        You have a really great series going here.  I love your descriptive writing style!  I really can't wait to see what Brianna thinks of Earth and then what happens when she returns to Dolvia!”

-- Phoenix Carvelli
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KIRKUS REVIEWS

HeartStone: Book II of the Dolvia Saga
Atrium, Stella
$19.95 paperback, $6.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1462070442; June 15, 2012

The second installment of Atrium’s Dolvia Saga is a character-driven sci-fi tale that explores profound—and timely—themes of sexual oppression, environmentalism and cultural intolerance.
      Atrium’s intricate novel ranges widely in theme—gender, politics, existential philosophy, mysticism, etc. Set primarily on the planet of Dolvia—where the females of the indigenous, frequently warring tribes of the savannah maintain few rights and are forced to wear burkas—the storyline revolves, at least initially, around Dr. Edna Edwina Greensboro, a bush-clinic doctor whose courage, compassion and vision have begun to change some of the insular ways of thinking.
       Getting married to Lt. Mike Shaw, an off-world military man, and keeping two female gualareps—oversized and sentient iguana-esque reptiles—increases her status. But when she witnesses a “mixed blood” girl being brutally abused, she realizes that she’s working against centuries of oppression reinforced by cultural mores, folklore, myth and cruel men dead set on guarding the status quo. After all, the victims “are only women.”
        The commentary on gender politics benefits from a foreign setting; it’s an exercise in considering discrimination without finger-pointing. But that’s only one aspect of this multifaceted story—as Greensboro fights to save lives and educate the tribespeople, nefarious individuals and companies seek to profit from the chaos.
        Aside from a few instances where the storyline becomes erratic—as with Greensboro’s marriage, for example—Atrium’s saga continues with another entertaining and powerful read, reminiscent of Octavia E. Butler and Margaret Atwood.
         An allegorical, emotionally intimate narrative for sci-fi fans, with broad themes that could appeal to a mainstream audience, too.

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HeartStone is “live” this holiday weekend.  Yeah!
As an incentive to get started with the series, we’re offering the ebook version of SufferStone: Book I of the Doliva Saga at the 55% discounted price of $3.09 on Amazon.com.  The offer is good through June 2012.


Sign up for GoodReads giveaway of softcover copies of SufferStone to celebrate the release of Book II.  Ten days only!

Self-Publishers: Taking the Long View

by Stella Atrium
5/15/12
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I live in Old Town in Chicago, as I have mentioned in previous blogs.  We have a series of street fairs in the summer here, and I like to attend to watch the well-heeled residents. At one fair last summer a kiosk was set-up outside the entrance to the actual fair where bright-faced young people were giving away samples of a new energy drink in a red and black aluminum can with a twist top.  I carried my sample around for forty minutes so they couldn’t force another one on me when I passed again.

I was headed home at two in the afternoon when the fair was just going into full swing, and one of the young venders at the kiosk announced that they had sold out.  “We sold out,” she proclaimed, even though there was no cash drawer for receiving funds. “That other booth still has product, but ours is gone because we had the better-selling item.” I didn’t argue with her. It’s not good to discourage young people.

The booth she indicated was actually selling their drinks, at Chicago prices, street fair prices, and was stocked for the entire day, rather than with enough product to last only five hours.  

I turned the corner and passed some overfull trash bins, many holding unopened cans of red and black design.  I threw my unopened can on top.

Self-publishers can take a lesson from this incident. Best-selling is an abused term when talking about 99¢ items, or free items. Maybe more pieces moved out of the kiosk, but what profit was made?

You may argue that promotions are not about profit, but about branding. I would counter that a free sample is not the same as a purchase, and doesn’t imply that I will remember the product’s name, open it, or look for one later at the store. Branding didn’t happen.

Some entrepreneurs advise writers and self-publishers to work at providing the personal touch, spend hours on Twitter and Tumblr, solicit interviews on the websites of other writers, engage with giveaways at reading sites, join in blog tours, lower the prices for ebooks, and constantly reassess what works for your genre or your story. These advisors are the people who are making money – from writers – If we stop the rat race, they would have no audience.

Maybe in the old paradigm short-term sales pushed visibility of a new book. A flurry of reviews followed by a prime location in chain bookstores were coordinated with a print run that ensured enough copies to meet demand after the writer appeared on the Today Show.

Monthly sales were monitored by chain bookstores so that, if a book didn’t move in six weeks, copies were returned to the distributor.

The new era of ebooks changed that need for quarterly sales figures and lists of top ten sales numbers.  In ebook form, the item is not returned so bookstore inventory stays fresh. An ebook is published forever and can gain an audience by word-of-mouth, and by good reviews, over six months or eighteen months.

Or eighteen years.

The writer can reinforce her brand by publishing a second book in a series.  I learned on Reddit that some fans of fantasy (my genre) don’t pick up the first book of a trilogy until all three books are available.  That’s the long view. I’m not published to my fan base until Book III is in print.

But where’s the downside of taking the long view?  Book II of my Dolvia Saga titled HeartStone is due out in June 2012.  I paid for a Kirkus Review so some quality press accompanies the release, and a couple reviewers from GoodReads were kind enough to review ARC copies.

I’m considering RAISING the price of the ebook version to a level more in keeping with other writers in my cohort – equalizing the price for Book I and Book II at $6.99, similar to Lois MacMaster Bujold or Robin Hobb or Jacqueline Carey. After all, the paperback copy sells for $19.95.

What is lost if I take the long view? A lot of busywork to keep pace with the Smashwords crowd?


So… if you made it this far.  Please BUY NOW.  SufferStone: Book I of the Dolvia Saga is still priced in ebook version at $3.19 on Amazon.  BUY NOW at this 55% discounted price before June 2012. 



Each ebook version of the Dolvia Saga is well worth $6.99, just like the fantasy novels of Bujold, Hobb and Carey are each worth the cover price. That’s equivalent to two cups of Starbucks coffee.  But today, you can BUY NOW at the discounted price of $3.19.


And you can claim that you’re in with the in-crowd.