The #Kobo #Review Fail

Although Amazon is the big cheese in book publishing/selling, I'll say right off it isn't perfect. It is not the author's best friend. The recent scandal about Kindle Unlimited (go HERE and HERE, but keep an eye on your blood pressure if you get through both AND the comments) and the top new releases show how scammers are taking as yet unpunished advantage of Amazon, and the continually diminishing payments in KU with its demand for exclusivity have put my hackles up. That said, it is still the marketplace that pays me most.

And let's face it, there's no serious competition. Other retailers have been slow to adopt the often groundbreaking methods of Zon to provide an exceptional service to readersr. 1-Click purchasing to get a book straight on your Kindle, a loaning system that works for readers (but not necessarily so great for authors these days), a straight forward, easy option for authors to publish ebooks and print (it's the one platform where I NEVER have an issue with uploading or formatting) - yep, Amazon has a lot to offer. B&N have clearly given up, with their latest decision to withdraw from the UK. The Smashwords interface and Meatgrinder continues to suck. I've pulled my books from Google Play because of their random, unexplained and no-warning price changes that can affect my book prices elsewhere. I don't understand the All Romance eBook rebate thing, and I don't sell anything there. I only get sales from iTunes via D2D - not having a Mac or an Apple account makes them unfathomable to me.

The only real alternative I see to Amazon right now is Kobo, and I do still have my issues there as an author. At this moment I also have an issue with Kobo as a reader, and it's one that affects authors too. Authors love and want reviews, right? But what happens when Kobo rejects your review and won't tell you why?

I don't know about most people (when I posted about the problem on Facebook most didn't even know you could post reviews on Kobo. Now that's another problem for a start) but I've now wasted a lot of time on this issue and made zip progress. So I'm about to give up. I've wasted precious time, and an author whose book I enjoyed is missing out on a review. This has been ongoing for over two weeks now.

So, my issue with Kobo?
1. Their 'guidelines' - listed as review writing tips - are vague and no help in identifying exactly what triggered the rejection. Plus you can only find those when actually writing a review (at least, after searching Help and looking around their website, that's the only way I could find them. Please point out my blindness if that's wrong).
2. When I finally got someone to talk to me via email (after several auto responses and invitations to 'chat' - no. I don't chat. I want email) they gave me their more specific but internal review guidelines...which still didn't tell me what the actual issue was.
3. After removing three things I thought might be triggering the rejection, resubmitting, and hearing nothing for over a week, another rejection. Bearing in mind I've posted other similar reviews before and since, AND at all the other retailers (including Amazon who can be temperamental and random with review deletions) without ANY issues.
4. Their appalling lack of a decent 'contact us'. A form for reporting ereader faults only is...unhelpful.
5. Their Twitter account @KoboHelp was way more responsive...but after discussing it up to and including sending them my actual review, they went silent. I've messaged them again twice. I got one reassurance that they were looking into it the first time. Then nothing.

So here's the review that posted everywhere else, and the crossed out bits are what I cut from the edited review that I submitted (and that also got rejected), with the new sections in blue. Can anyone tell me what's getting it booted? (PS, this is taken from the Goodreads version where the spoiler is hidden-for the retailers, the hide option is not available so the spoiler is in full).

Please excuse the peculiar phrasing which is due to Kobo's oversensitive review algorithms.
What I liked:
Grab some tissues and hold on tight! This final installment packs some serious emotional punch (one reason I generally go for SFR over straight SF, but here you get it without the romance), as well as a real adrenaline-laced ride through violence, more betrayal, sacrifice, and emotional awakenings. Basically all hell breaks loose. I finally forgave Caleb for being such a jerk as this a-hole twat of a reluctant hero has finally turned himself around from someone I hoped would die long before the end of the series to one I could cheer and feel for. Clean, crisp and gritty writing, with a couple of good twists towards the end, plus a satisfactory conclusion that wraps up the four books but leaves intriguing openings for more. Frankly I would love more of One's adventures, but could let Caleb fly off into the sunset because I can only see him reverting after all the character growth in the four books (and I don't want to see that).

What I didn't like:
*spoiler alert! Don't read this section if you don't want the ending given away* 

[Well. It's a minor niggle, but the ending didn't sit entirely right with me. I think it's more because I'm perfectly willing to kill all my characters at the end of a non-romance, so maybe I expect other authors to do it (and there's really no reason why they should!). And the vague hints of romance/light romantic elements throughout weren't exactly resolved either - there's still an opening there for potential future books. Maybe I'm just too set into the SciFi romance groove to accept a non-romance ending when I felt the story was heading that way. That said, it wasn't enough to even justify taking off a half star, and didn't spoil my overall enjoyment.]

In conclusion:

I feel like One ripped out my heart and squished it, before giving me a hug! This was a seriously good conclusion to the series, and a real tear-jerker, as well as providing some dark, acidic humor and high-adrenaline action. Those hoping for a romantic ending might be disappointed, but for fans of scifi action adventure who aren't offended by the sex explicit bedroom scenes and foul language, this is perfection. Recommended for those who like Firefly/Farscape certain space opera series starting with F.

Full disclosure: I received a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

###

Any ideas? Maybe the full disclosure thing? IDK.

Update: I received this via Twitter -

"Thank you for your continued patience. We have reached out to our web team and it would seem that this is currently a known issue. Unfortunately, until this is resolved you may continue to have issues submitting your review without it being denied. This is a system issue but please note that we are working adamantly to resolve it."

I'm guessing that means there's a problem with their automated system and perhaps not the review itself after all, but I'm not really all that much the wiser so I said so -

"It seems that quite a few reviews are being automatically rejected by the system. We are looking into this matter and working to resolve it. We apologize that you believed our team was rejecting your post..."

So there you go. I've still waiting for two further Kobo reviews to go live (I uploaded them before the second rejection) but they could get caught in this problem, and repeatedly rejected too. I'll let you know. But your best option if you want to talk to Kobo is very clearly the Twitter account.

Status Update

I'm pushing to get the revisions done on Reunion by the end of this week as my monsters break up for the spring holiday on Thursday and I'll be taking my usual social media/work respite. The release date is still 21st May, but the sheer amount of words I've had to add so far (almost 10K) is starting to scare me!

I'm also signed up to edit my June project for this April's Camp NaNoWrimo. I need deadlines! Another downside of being indie is I don't work well to deadlines I set myself, not even release dates. If anyone would like to volunteer to stand over me with a cattle-prod to get things done, I can pay in cookies...

Quickshot releases in just 9 days! If you haven't pre-ordered it, you can find it at all the links below the cover. With the scandal over KU I decided to pull it from Amazon exclusivity and go wide, and finished uploading it to other retailers last week (phew!).

A Space Opera Short Story
Goodreads | Webpage
Amazon | ARe | Smashwords
iTunes | Kobo | B&N

Restless In Peaceville (my YA paranormal with zombies) and When Dark Falls (my dieselpunk superhero romance) are now both out of KU and back up at most retailers (I think I'm just waiting on B&N for Restless. As per usual). This means you can't borrow my books anywhere at this point in time. I'm sorry about that. The KU system sucks for me, and nowhere else is currently offering a subscription service that works. If you want to read my books for free, I can only suggest signing up as a reviewer at Manic Readers or The Romance Reviews site - I'm currently updating and reloading my titles there and added Quickshot and Keir's Fall - or my YA works (currently excluding Gethyon) are available at YA Insider.

AND Keir's Fall is currently up at NetGalley to read and review for free HERE. Working for a review site is a fantastic way to get books for free without using pirate sites, harming authors and opening your computer to viruses or getting your financial info hacked.

Happenings

The Little Things Blog Hop is in full swing until the end of March. Over 100 participating authors and over 50 prized to be won! Click the banner to visit my post on the hop and find the link to the next.

From next week I'm taking a two week break as my monsters are on holiday, so my next two posts will be on automatic as I share some info and excerpts from Quickshot. Enjoy!

The #KindleUnlimited Conundrum (again)

And here we are, March already. The year is whizzing past (no complaint from me just yet as we speed into spring and say goodbye to the cold weather and shorter days). And as we go into March, those titles I had in Kindle Unlimited are coming back out (in fact, one already is as of 20th February).

A Superhero Romance Novella
Goodreads | Amazon inc KU
Print edition:
Amazon | CreateSpace | B&N
The Book Depository

A YA Zombie Novella
Goodreads | Available from...
Amazon inc. KU

                                                                                             

I have had such mixed feelings over KU, and mixed experiences. Last June I blogged about why I was taking my short stories out of it for good. Shortly after I put two of my novellas previously with Breathless Press into KU because they just weren't selling. Out of the two, one is regularly borrowed but not in significant numbers. It also doesn't seem to have got my work any more visible.

So this year I decided I was going to take my remaining titles out of KU, though initially so that I could put them all back in together in March to tie in with my next release - hot space opera short Quickshot - which I'd decided to start off as an Amazon exclusive. I wanted everything scheduled to be on the same time scale for KU. But then Amazon made more changes. Every month the payment fund for KU pages read has been going down. And last month they changed the page count for Kindle books, mostly cutting them. So now not only do I get less per page read, but according to Amazon I now have less pages in those books. It sucks.

I've never liked the whole exclusivity thing, which is why I've kept some titles wide. I know Amazon punishes those NOT exclusive by making their titles less visible. But when the terms for KU are constantly paying less and less for borrows, I no longer see any benefit in it. Quickshot is going Amazon exclusive for its launch as an experiment, but it'll go wide when the 90 days are up. My series books will always go wide. While Amazon accounts for about 90% of my sales and going wide will mean them making me less visible, I refuse to be paid less and less for my books. I'm not anti-Amazon, but I can see where this is heading, and I'm not playing any more.

Even though being exclusively self published means I now earn more per month than with a publisher, it's still not a basic wage. For those curious, I currently get about $40 a month (instead of per quarter, which was the most I ever earned with a publisher). That's not even a living wage, just a dollar a day. Certainly not a good return on the hours I put into each book, or the edits and cover art that's done for them! So I am job hunting later this year with the hope of being back to work in 2017. If working six hours a day, five days a week during term time isn't paying me a basic wage, then it's time to leave. Writing will go back to being a hobby as and when I can fit it in. I think I came into publishing about a decade too late.

This is not a call for sympathy or a rant. Just reality. Maybe I'm not doing enough to promote myself, but I've done what I can and it hasn't worked out. I love writing and I'd like to keep publishing, but I need to be contributing to my household and family, and writing ain't doing it. I'm proud of what I've achieved, so I have no regrets there. I just wish it was making me a decent wage.

So Quickshot will release Amazon exclusive at the end of this month, and stay there for 90 days to buy and to borrow. Then it'll go wide. My last scheduled release for this year will be Reunion in May, which will go wide right from the start. After that, the third book for Keir will release in 2017. I can't promise anything else...

A Space Opera Short Story
Goodreads | Webpage
Amazon inc KU 

Status Update

This is how I currently feel with my revisions and editing.


via GIPHY

Reunion is still in revision. I came down with a sore throat and earache at the end of last week, courtesy of the germs my little monsters bring home from school, and it's made me even less enthusiastic about working at the moment. I hope to finish this week though.
I have opened and begun edits on the June project, but only a handful of corrections at the moment, just as a break from Reunion. It's not top priority at the moment.
I also rewrote the ending to my Rebecca finalist Revived...for the third time. Or is it the fourth? I've lost track. I'm hoping I might be able to release it later this year, depending on finances and my editor's work schedule.

Chook Update
Our four new girls now all have names! From left to right we have Pitch, Fizzgig, Spaghetti, and Effie.

Ping Pong
Congrats to Laurie on becoming a full time author at last! Enjoy!

Pippa Jay signing off...

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!