RETHINKING REVIEWING AS AN AUTHOR

I just finished a big campaign for my Interstellar Rescue SFR series with a promo group called Itsy Bitsy Book Bits. The company’s founder, Colleen Noyes, and her team provide a full range of promotional services for authors, including organizing social media blitzes on Twitter and in Facebook reader groups, and recruiting reviewers. They can help launch a new book, or as in my case, generate new interest in books that have been out for a while.

I had used IBBB when I first launched one or two of my titles, so I called on Colleen again as I was starting over as a self-published author. And the results were great! Colleen has a sizable stable of volunteer reviewers to draw from, and I gained 20-25 or so new reviews for each of my books, posted not only on Amazon and Goodreads, but on BookBub, too.

I didn’t really write this post as an ad for IBBB, though I highly recommend the company if you need promo help. All this has been a long lead-in to a mea culpa and a vow to do better myself when it comes to reviews.

Everybunny should write reviews, including me.

Yes, I know, I have urged folks for years to PLEASE REVIEW the books you read. Authors thrive on reviews like flowers thrive on sunshine. In fact, we can’t survive without them. But the sad truth is, although I read dozens of books every year, I write very few reviews. (The exceptions are for friends' book launches, or by special request, or for a great book that seems to have attracted little notice.) Time is a factor, of course. But, as many other authors will tell you, Amazon actively discourages writers from reviewing other writers, at times even removing reviews and sending nasty emails if you dare to post a review. There are ways around the Evil ’Zon Gnomes, but I won’t say what those are.

So I often duck my duty. Then my reviewers started posting on BookBub. And I got this message: To grow your following and get more exposure, post recommendations 1-4 times per month. Huh. You mean, you want me to recommend books by other authors? Well, yes, that makes sense, but usually no one outside the writing community recognizes that cross-promotion is a good thing. Competition has always been the key to success according to the Powers That Be. Thus the NY Times Best Sellers List, the fight to get to the Big Five publishers and Amazon in all its crazy glory.

Then there is Goodreads. A lovely idea, really, which has had its own problems from time to time. I won’t go into those drawbacks here, except to say I haven’t experienced any of them, perhaps because I’ve stayed under the radar. But, since I read a lot, I get messages from the GR folks, too. “Now that you’ve finished Title X, what did you think of it?” “Update your progress!” “What will you read next?” And so on. Helpful, but a little creepy.

Still, since everyone knows what books I’m reading (or have read) thanks to the kind GR folks, it stands to reason I should say something about those books. And, who knows, those readers who follow me may then want to read those books, too. If nothing else, they will learn something about me, which helps shape my “brand,” whatever that may be. (The problem is my reading tastes are very eclectic—from historical nonfiction to romantic suspense, Regency romance to Stephen King. What readers are supposed to deduce from that I don’t know.)

They’ll probably notice I’m pretty positive in my reviews, once I get down to writing them. It's rare when I pick up a dud, but it happens. Still, I’m a Southern girl; my mama always said, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. So when it comes to a Did Not Finish, all you’ll hear from me (publicly) is the sound of crickets chirping.

Cheers, Donna

Not Waving But Drowning #amwriting #amediting #amfreakingout

Ohmygosh, I am drowning in edits and rewrites. I screwed up my schedule royally by deciding to re-release Zombie Girl and release Quickshot. So now I have edits for an entire novel due out June, rewrites and edits for a novella due out 21st May (which I'm also planning an event for), a short story to release in March, and somehow I have to fit writing in there. By the time the June novel is out, I'll have to dive straight into Keir's Shadow (Book Three of Redemption) because I'd like to release that May 2017, but it's 80K mess of a novel that needs a complete overhaul before I can even think about sending it to Dani. 

And in the real world, my daughter has reached the point in her school life at the age of thirteen where she needs to decide the exam subjects that will shape/make her future career. Eeep! She's stressed and we're stressed for her and about her. Too much pressure at her age! My eldest boy is also rapidly approaching the move from junior to senior school. He's on the autistic spectrum, and while it hasn't affected his learning ability (he's a maths genius), it does impact his social skills and ability to deal with changes. He also doesn't deal with his own stress very well, and it can lead to explosive outbursts that are difficult to accept or handle for those unfamiliar with him and/or his condition. His current school has been fantastic in supporting him, but the transition might well give him good reason to slip back and bring back his anxiety issues.

So this is a short post. Next week is school holidays which has become a no working/no social media time for me, for the sake of my kids and my sanity. I need to have Reunion complete by the end of March to stop me freaking out over release dates. The June novel - well, if it goes into July/August, I don't mind but it's the knock-on effect for Keir's Shadow that bothers me. And I'd still like to release my Rebecca finalist Revived and finish that pesky winter SFR in time for this December. But I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime...

Happenings

Want to read my books for free? Well, there's a couple of ways you can do that completely legitimately over the next couple of months. Keir is up at NetGalley again to read and review for free. Keir's Fall will go up next month (March). And there's a print edition of Keir's Fall up for giveaway at Goodreads. I've also started a Read To Review sign up HERE which you can join to automatically receive ARCs of my future books before they release to the rest of the universe.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

     

Keir's Fall

by Pippa Jay

Giveaway ends February 29, 2016.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

On the 10th I'm part of Liza O'Connor's Blue Men from Space blog, and there's a contest!
On the 11th I'm guesting at Dawn's Reading Nook and talking about five killer kisses.
On the 17th Keir is taking part in the Great Pick-Up Line at The Delighted Reader blog. It's a month long event with giveaways.
Did you vote for Keir in the Hunky Hero-fest and enter the giveaway? There's still time. Go HERE.

Status Update
Last weekend I revealed the covers for both Reunion and Quickshot. In case you missed them...

Space Opera Short Story
Goodreads | Webpage
Amazon inc KU

Aren't they glorious? Again, these are the awesome work of my wonderful cover designer Danielle Fine. Check out her services HERE.

Reunion at Kasha-Asor, my planned release for 21st May and a side story in Keir's Redemption series, is in second round edits but also undergoing a partial rewrite. My planned June release is with me for first round edits.

Quickshot is now up for pre-order and due to release 31st March (link under the book cover above), and will be Amazon exclusive for at least the first 90 days (my apologies to the non-Kindle peeps. However, if you'd like a non-Amazon edition, here's the deal. Buy it from Amazon, send me proof of purchase and the actual format you need, and I will send it to you. Or you could sign up to my Read To Review list HERE, although you will need to have reviewed at least one of my other titles before).
Zombie Girl: Dead Awakened is also up for pre-order, due to release at most online retailers on the 15th February (links under the cover in the right hand side bar).
And Keir finally hit 50 reviews on Amazon US. That last one was a long time coming! I thought it would be stuck on 49 forever. Um, did I mention I have an obsession with numbers?

Ping Pong
Next week I'm trading places with Donna as her second novel - Trouble In Mind - releases on Tuesday! So I'm moving over to Friday for the week. I'm also taking time out from the internet as my monsters have their half term holiday, so any posts/tweets will be running on automatic.
See you on the flip side! Um, that's the 23rd of February in translation...

A Thing About Kindle Unlimited #publishing #KU

On the 15th of July, my three short stories (Terms & Conditions Apply, Reboot and Hallow's Eve) will come out of Kindle Unlimited for good. Now, it's not because of the new payment system. No. I'd originally gone for KU in the hope of generating sales for my other non-KU stories. Because the KU payments were small, I wasn't tempted to put in longer works, but it was enough to tempt me to risk my three shorts. Since Amazon only pays 35% royalties on works under $2.99 (and no way am I charging that for something 10K in length or under), KU gave me a better payout and the hope that sales of my other works might follow.

They didn't. There was no boost to my other titles, and though I got paid more per borrow than per sale, I got fewer borrows than I had done sales, so it pretty much balanced out payment wise. Therefore it wasn't benefiting me in the way I'd hoped, and the exclusivity thing always makes me irritable. Unfortunately I forgot to untick the box to leave KU after 90 days, and so sentenced myself to a further 90.

The recent announcement of the uber-confusing changes to KU therefore didn't really bother me (confusing in that while I understand the theory of payment by page, the exact maths given to calculate that and the constantly fluctuating fund we get paid from means the amount per page remains unknown). I'd already decided to go, and the changes mean I have even less incentive to ever go back. I also don't plan to put in any future/longer titles since I'm selling on other platforms and I don't believe even the pay per page scheme with its incomprehensible maths and the uncertain value of the KU fund each month will be the better ROI (Return On Investment). I prefer to know for sure what I'm getting paid. It did, however, raise another aggravation I have with Amazon.

Returns. Now, although I've personally never returned a book, I know the 1-click thing makes it too easy to buy a book, and perhaps buy a book you didn't want. Or one you got charged more for than the advertised price. Or maybe someone read a bit past the sample they'd checked out on Amazon and decided the book wasn't for them after all. But there are certain people who buy a book on Amazon, read the whole thing and then return it, like Amazon is some kind of free library (and Amazon is fully aware of this). They get to read a book for free, without even paying a subscription. Sorry, but I think that's unfair.

So if Amazon can monitor how many pages of a Kindle book someone reads in KU, then why the heck can't they do the same for returns? If someone reads the entire book and Amazon can see that, then I feel it's simple enough for them to refuse to refund the book, or at least charge the reader something - perhaps the equivalent of the pay per page rate, as if the reader has used the KU system.

I totally get that sometimes someone will read part of a book and decide it's not for them after all. But if the book has been read in its entirety and then returned, I find it hard to believe there isn't something questionable about it. If I don't like a book, I certainly don't bother to keep reading to the end (life is too short to waste on a book I'm not enjoying, and there's plenty more books to choose from). I have no doubt that either way there will be unhappy authors or unhappy readers (no system is perfect) but I'd like to see more to discourage the trend of reading and returning rather than Amazon saying they do monitor for serial returners and penalize them.

In the meantime, you have just two more weeks to borrow my three short stories from KU before they come out forever (I believe there's no time limit on when you read them, just on how long they're available for you to click Borrow). My longer works are available at Scribd (where I know exactly what I'll get paid for each borrow), and my reclaimed short stories will be going up there once KU ends. Now that Draft2Digital has struck a deal with Oyster, I've put my titles into that too (I currently don't do this via Smashwords). With Oyster you can borrow or buy the book.

Will I ever use KU again? Unlikely. Even with the new pay scheme ensuring fairer pay on longer works, the uncertainty of the monthly fund and exactly what I might get per page read (and the system for assessing that isn't 100% accurate) and the fact it contributed nothing to my sales of other titles previously don't make it an attractive offer to me. The price of exclusivity does not give me a fair return on investment at this time.

Have you used KU as an author and/or a reader? What's your experience been?


Status Update

Keir's Fall, book two of Redemption, is still with my editor, with a possible November release date. I've been revising the side story (releasing early 2016) and a second Venus Ascendant story to follow Terms & Conditions Apply (as yet not scheduled for edits, but I hope to have that out in 2016 as well). I'm also working on three short stories for July Camp NaNoWriMo (starting tomorrow, eep!) for anthology calls all due for publication this year. O.O I still have two other SciFi romance shorts to complete as well, before I start revising book three of the Redemption series. I hope to have the Redemption series completed by the end of 2017, although books four and five aren't even whole drafts at this time. I do, however, know how they end...

Happenings

It's week five of the SFR Brigade Summer Cafe, and it's our Supernova serving - hotter than hot SciFi romance and erotica. Go HERE. Then there will be just one more week with another round of Space Opera before the Cafe closes for this year.

Since I only had two comments on my post for the Summer Cafe last week, I've decided to be generous and gift books to both visitors (see what you miss if you don't comment? Lol). Congrats to Riley and Carol, who receive the digital formats of their choice from my titles.

Today is the last day to enter the Goodreads giveaway for Keir. It's also the last day to pick it up from NetGalley to read and review (and to vote on the cover) HERE.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

 Keir

 by Pippa Jay

 Giveaway ends June 30, 2015.
 See the giveaway details at  Goodreads.

Enter to Win

My review of Liza O'Connor's first book in a new SciFi series goes live HERE tomorrow. If you're a fan of Douglas Adams you should check it out! Liza will be guest blogging about The Gods of Probabilities at Spacefreighters Lounge in two weeks time.

And in just under three weeks my monsters will break up for the seven week summer holiday, and I plan to take the whole of August off to read and spend time with my not so little ones. For anyone who was interested in my conversion of a Monster High doll into my hero Keir, a weekly post will be going up at my Tumblr blog HERE during the holidays, starting Wednesday 22nd July, and there will be an exclusive reveal of my second doll conversion too. I'll also be posting more reviews at Critique de Book as and when I can. Funny to think that this time last year I had two releases upcoming for July and August - my first with the now sadly closed Breathless Press. How things can change in a year!

Enjoy!

Breaking the Habit

Last year I achieved a total of 100K words. I would have loved that to have been one novel. It wasn't. I had a batch of novellas and shorts stories, written from scratch or finished off from the previous year. That's okay. Right now, I want to have several things out to increase my visibility. I plan to go back to writing novels next year.

But one of the longest projects from last year is also the freakiest. Freaky because it's a genre I'd never written and rarely read, with a paranormal creature I said I'd never write, and written in first person POV which in general I dislike reading. (The moral of this story is never say never, BTW). As if that wasn't enough reason for a meltdown, it also has a request on it from a publisher.

But aside from all that, the thing that bothers me most is the time scale. Now, I would love to write and publish more than I currently do. I try. But it never works out. Generally it takes me a year to eighteen months from the moment I put down the first words until I consider the work ready for submission (short stories being the exception - that's usually three months tops). The recent freaky WIP was written as part of NaNoWriMo, though that finished with the story at around 36K. As of last Friday, it's 46K. But because it had a request on it, rather than setting it aside once the original draft was complete and coming back to it, I've pushed ahead nonstop. Apart from working on a couple of short stories and finishing off an older project, I've been revising, editing, researching and rewriting this since November. That isn't how I normally work. And once I got close to submission, I freaked out. Because even though I've probably put as much, if not more effort and hours into this, it still feels I haven't spent enough time and love on it compared to all the others. Submitting a novella after just three months?! Inconceivable! Lol.

I *could* have spent another month on it. I'm not convinced that it would have been any more ready. On Friday I hit send, just three and a bit months after starting the story in November. The problem is I feel like I've now set myself a precedent. If I can produce one 46K novella in three months, then I should be able to do four a year. Or two 90K novels. I'd love to do that. However, with other things that are currently going on behind the scenes, I can't commit to that. Not this year. And it feels like I've done NaNoWriMo all over again by working solidly and intensely on the same piece all this time. I'm exhausted! Hence the lack of blogging (sorry!)
So now the freaky story has gone, I feel relieved instead of the usual anxiety over submissions. It's been such an obsession over the past few weeks to hone this story and have it right and out that now it's like I've been released, lol.

Have you ever had a project that was totally out of your comfort zone? One that made you question your sanity?

Pippa's Journal

Gethyon was accorded Most Awesome Psychic Talent in the recent SFR Galaxy Awards! Woot! With Keir winning Best May to September Romance last year, I'm proud to call myself a double SFR Galaxy Award winner. :) To check out the other awesome winners, please visit the awards site HERE.

 Also this month I have set a new record for myself. I currently have four different pieces out on submission. FOUR! I've had the same piece subbed out to two or three different places before, but never different works. Admittedly one is a novella to my editor for her professional opinion on whether it's worthy to self publish, but still. That's just as nerve-wracking. I also have two shorts scheduled for self publishing in October and November. The PNR is with my editor, while the SFR is due for completion this month alongside another I plan to release next year. Potentially I could have six pieces out over the next year. That's pretty mind-blowing. Of course, most of those I have no control over. Watch this space! (Update - actually, I got a rejection yesterday. But within a few hours I'd had a request on something else, so I am STILL on four submissions. Publishing is just crazy!).

Happenings
Keir is still currently unavailable as I wait for the new contract from Kensington, but you still have until the 14th February to enter the giveaways for either a now rare print edition or my one remaining digital version HERE. There's also an ultra-rare print edition of Tales from the SFR Brigade to be won. In fact, right now you could win my entire backlist in one format or another. My YA SciFi Gethyon is part of a huge giveaway sponsored by Champagne Books HERE, and it comes as one of forty titles with a Kindle paperwhite. Plus you have one more day to enter a SciFi romance giveaway run by Lyn Brittan which includes my short story Terms & Conditions Apply HERE.

Breathless Press are running a critique session from the 14th-16th February. Feedback is always helpful, and the freaky story I submitted got a full request as part of a similar event they ran for NaNoWriMo.

The SFR Galaxy Award winners were announced at the end of January, and you can check them all out HERE.

You still have until the 14th February to submit to the special Women Destroy SF edition of Lightspeed Magazine. Go HERE for details. C'mon girls, let's blow them away!

Ping Pong
Bad Boys and Redeemable Heroes. Laurie and Donna, I'm with you. Even the most evil of villains has to have a shot of redemption, even if they prove their villainy by refusing to take it. A non-redeemable hero? No. To me, that's a contradiction. And it does entirely depend on the story and circumstances as to whether I forgive infidelity. I can't explain that without giving away one of my own upcoming plots. I'm anxious to see how people take it because I struggled with it myself. How much are people willing to forgive in a certain situation?

Watching Star Wars Revenge of the Sith made me change my feelings over Darth Vader as a redeemed character. When we only had the original trilogy we knew he was evil, and although I always felt he was a bit slow in leaping to Luke's defence at the end of ROTJ, I felt he'd earned his salvation. However, after knowing he killed younglings in the Jedi temple through the prequels, I now can't forgive him. That was one step too far for me (I still don't buy his reason for turning to the Dark Side anyhow, but that's another discussion).

Who the heck is Mary Sue?

Okay first off, in case you don’t know me, I’m Sharon. I blog here. Just not very often. Mostly I lurk and sometimes comment. By way of excuse I have a young child and a recent book release and just in general find it hard to get posts written on any kind of regular schedule.

On top of that, early this year a comet rocketed into my atmosphere: breast cancer. WHAM. 

A very rare form (adenoid cystic carcinoma), and very treatable. But regardless, it rocked my world. Have you seen the movie SLIDING DOORS? You could actually almost classify it as SFR, with the parallel timeline plot. Anyhow, at one point in the film -- I believe it’s shortly after the heroine gets fired, goes home early, and catches her boyfriend cheating on her -- this conversation happens:

HERO: You know what the Monty Python Boys say.

HEROINE: “Always look on the bright side of life”?

HERO: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

Nope. They don’t. And I didn’t. And for several months, going to doctors and undergoing painful and stress-inducing tests and procedures -- and just trying to get my brain around all the information and the hard decisions I had to make -- was like a second job.

I’ve been pretty open about it from the beginning, posting about the diagnosis and the events that followed on my personal Facebook page. But this is the first time I’ve discussed it publicly. I don’t think we’re meant to go into a cave at times like these. We need each other. I feel like every good wish or positive vibration sent to me during that time helped me. I am eternally grateful for all the amazing love and support, from dearest friends and relatives to writing colleagues I may have only met once, or never.

So thank you friends, and thank you universe, for adding your strength to mine and carrying me through one of the more trying periods of my life.

And now you may ask . . . What does Mary Sue have to do with all this? Nothing, probably. Or everything, possibly.

 

My debut novel GHOST PLANET is April's main pick for the Vaginal Fantasy Hangout book club, created by actor/producer Felicia Day. (We’ll post more about the upcoming review this weekend.) Since this was announced, the reviews are POURING in. I have to thank Felicia for that, as well as for her hilarious series THE GUILD, which kept me laughing instead of freaking out the night before my surgery.

Anyway, one thing I have seen pop up a couple times in the book club’s Goodreads discussion thread, as well as a recent, wonderful 5-star review by Vaginal Fantasy reviewer and The Sword & Laser book club co-host Veronica Belmont – is the term “Mary Sue.” My understanding of the meaning of this term is when an author writes herself into a main character in an idealized way. (See Wikepedia.) Although it also seems often to be used in reference to a character who seems too perfect. Too . . . too.

George Eliot

My first awareness of this concept (though not by the name "Mary Sue") came when reading the introduction to one of my favorite novels, MIDDLEMARCH, by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans). The person who wrote the intro referred to the story's beautiful, intelligent heroine, and suggested the character was a stand-in for Evans herself, who was intelligent but apparently not considered physically beautiful.

The term Mary Sue has a negative connotation in most cases. In the aforementioned case I felt the intro writer was implying Evans should have been above such a thing. But I can’t help wondering – why so? For me -- and I would wager for a lot of writers -- development of authorly aspirations began with daydreaming, and with fantasies that prominently featured (drumroll) ME.

I know when I was writing GHOST PLANET, the first time I’d (1) attempted first-person point of view and (2) completed a full-length work, I found it much easier to get in Elizabeth’s head when the outside of that head resembled my own. There are resemblances between the insides of our heads as well.

Yours Truly

Would I like to be as young and pretty as Elizabeth? You bet. As bright and determined? Heck yeah! To have a brilliant, blue-eyed Irish psychologist for a boyfriend? Are you seriously asking me that?

Does that make my heroine a “Mary Sue”? Well, yes. Probably so. Am I bothered by that? No. Not even a little.

I would venture to guess that most authors’ debuts have someone very like themselves (but better!) somewhere in the story. And thank goodness for that! The first piece of advice you get as a writer is “write what you know.” And as for idealizing that person … last time I checked we were writing romance. We WANT to read about beautiful heroines, whether that beauty be outward, like Dorothea, or only inward, like little Jane Eyre.

Personally, I think readers can handle a Mary Sue. (Case in point: Veronica’s review uses the term and still gives GHOST PLANET the top rating.) What they absolutely can’t stomach is a passive heroine, or one without faults. (And that's a whole other blog post.) I think in some cases when readers use the term Mary Sue, this is really what they mean.

Okay, your turn! What does Mary Sue mean to you? Do you think it’s a bad thing?