Book Marketing Basics: Book Reviews

Book reviews are probably the best sales and marketing tool you can have in addition to a great landing page.

Granted, reviews aren’t easy to get, but they are worth the effort because there is no such thing as having too many reviews. They tell a landing page visitors that other readers liked the book. That eliminates the visitor's suspicion that she may be getting tricked into buying a piece a junk.

You can get reviews on your own, use review sites and by buying them.

On your own

Every author does a bit of this. You contact your relatives and friends and ask them to read and review your new book. Another approach is to send out social media posts asking for contacts to review the book. This is quite iffy. Many of the contacts who respond have no intention of ever writing a review: they are simply after a free book. Still, you will get an occasional review this way.

Review sites

There are many sites that will, for a fee, spread the word about your book to their list of potential reviewers. Many of these sites will only promote ebooks on Kindle. Of those sites, many will only promote ebooks that are heavily discounted. Others will only accept ebooks that are free. Note that any reviews that come out of these promotions are not paid reviews. The fee does not buy a review: rather you’re paying for access to the site’s list of potential reviewers

Buying reviews

Sites such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews will review your book for a fee. A large fee. Amazon will not allow paid reviews to be posted for your book. These reviews can however be added to the book’s content using the Amazon Central Page feature.

While getting more reviews can be a frustrating and time-consuming chore, it’s an essential task in an author’s basic marketing plans.

There is a lot more material about book marketing on my site: https://www.hankquense.online/bookmarketing

The good, bad and ugly about self-publishing

Self-publishing is not as simple or straightforward as you may expect. This is especially true if all your information came from web searches. That is because the internet has a lot of inaccurate and incorrect information on it. It also has stuff that is simply wrong.

• I found an editor and we agreed on a price. Now he says he can’t finish editing my novel unless I give him a thousand dollars more. What’s going on?

Most likely you are being scammed. This is especially true If you asked several editors for prices and the one you chose had the lowest price. The editor low-balled the price to get the business and now he’s blackmailing you to give him more money.

On the other hand, perhaps your manuscript is a hot mess and requires a lot more work than originally estimated. If you provided a writing sample with your query letter, this shouldn’t have happened.

• I just got advance review copies of my new book. Man, does it feel good to hold one in my hand!

It does, doesn’t it. It makes one feel proud of all the hard work that went into producing the book.

• Amazon is charging me a $1.38 download fee on every ebook I sell. What’s this for?

Amazon (alone among all publishers and packagers) charges a download fee for ebooks. Why does it do that? Because it can. It’s just another tactic to squeeze a bit more money out of the authors. If you have a graphics-heavy ebook, the download charges can actually exceed the price of the ebook. In other words, you lose money on every sale unless you raise the ebook price.

• My book has been published. How come no one is buying it?

No one’s buying it because no one knows about it. If you want people to buy the book, you have to tell them about it. And that is called marketing.

- I found this website that said it would help me publish my book, but they want me to pay over $6000. Is this a scam?

Mostly likely not. There are publishers — a lot of them — who think authors should pay through the nose to get their book published. Instead of paying the outrageous fees, query the smaller publishing companies. They are much easier to get acceptance than the major publishers are and they don’t charge.

-I uploaded my manuscript to an ebook packager and it was rejected because it violated the Epub3 standard. What does this mean?

Self-publishing is not as simple or straightforward as you may expect. This is especially true if all your information came from web searches. That is because the internet has a lot of inaccurate and incorrect information on it. It also has stuff that is simply wrong.

• I found an editor and we agreed on a price. Now he says he can’t finish editing my novel unless I give him a thousand dollars more. What’s going on?

Most likely you are being scammed. This is especially true If you asked several editors for prices and the one you chose had the lowest price. The editor low-balled the price to get the business and now he’s blackmailing you to give him more money.

On the other hand, perhaps your manuscript is a hot mess and requires a lot more work than originally estimated. If you provided a writing sample with your query letter, this shouldn’t have happened.

• I just got advance review copies of my new book. Man, does it feel good to hold one in my hand!

It does, doesn’t it. It makes one feel proud of all the hard work that went into producing the book.

• Amazon is charging me a $1.38 download fee on every ebook I sell. What’s this for?

Amazon (alone among all publishers and packagers) charges a download fee for ebooks. Why does it do that? Because it can. It’s just another tactic to squeeze a bit more money out of the authors. If you have a graphics-heavy ebook, the download charges can actually exceed the price of the ebook. In other words, you lose money on every sale unless you raise the ebook price.

• My book has been published. How come no one is buying it?

No one’s buying it because no one knows about it. If you want people to buy the book, you have to tell them about it. And that is called marketing.

• I found this website that said it would help me publish my book, but they want me to pay over $6000. Is this a scam?

Mostly likely not. There are publishers — a lot of them — who think authors should pay through the nose to get their book published. Instead of paying the outrageous fees, query the smaller publishing companies. They are much easier to get acceptance than the major publishers are and they don’t charge.

• I uploaded my manuscript to an ebook packager and it was rejected because it violated the Epub3 standard. What does this mean?

What it says is that your ebook manuscript must be formatted in accordance with the Epub3 Standard. This standard means the ebook manuscript ends up being quite different from the print book manuscript. Fortunately, there is a free guide on how to format an ebook so it agrees with the standard. You can get a copy here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52

This short compilation contains a few of issues and problems self-publishing authors can come across.

Have you faced an issue that isn’t described here? Can you tell us about it, please?

There is more information about self-publishing here.

Storytelling Techniques

Storytelling is the art of relating a story in a way that will hold the reader’s or the listener’s attention. However, writing a story and telling a story require very different techniques and skills.

What is a story? A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem. Nothing more than that. And nothing less. Ben Bova The Craft of Writing Science Fiction.

 Motivation is one of most important elements in a story., If the reader perceives the characters are just going through the motions, the story will be a failure. How much motivation do the characters require? That is function of the story’s plot problem. If the character has to risk her life to solve the problem, then the motivation must be strong, very strong. If the plot problem is to find a Mother’s Day card at 11:00 on night before, then the motivation can be a lot less intense and can in fact be humorous. Whether strong or humorous, the characters must be motivated.

Reader experience: Do you ever stop to think about this question while writing your story? You should. After all, you’re writing the story for the reader. Therefore, what the reader is experiencing is a vital concern. It’s called the Dominant Reader Emotion or DRE. Your character’s DRE can be sympathy, pleasing, amusing etc. if the character is the protagonist . It can be anger. disgust etc if the character is the villain. The DRE determines how you write about the character in a scene. Your writing must be in agreement with the chosen DRE.

Conflict produces tension and conflict and tension produce emotions.and they are mandatory requirements for any story. No conflict? No tension? No emotions? No story!

Character arcs: a story without a character arc isn't a story because nothing has happened. Everything after the story ends is the same as before the story started. A character arc can’t be an on-off switch. You have to show the character slowly changing over the course of the story. In effect, the character arc can be a mini-story embedded into the main story.

Scenes are the building blocks of a story. Not word, not paragraphs, not chapters: scenes! Don't write xx number of words a day. Write scenes. Every scene must have a goal.  It just can’t be a number of paragraphs bunched together for the writer’s convenience.

Emotional arc is a vital element in the story-telling. Readers want to follow the character’s emotional journey. In every scene, there must be an emotional change for the main character in the scene. This scene main character doesn’t have to be the story’s main character. The character’s emotions at the end of the scene must be changed from the character’s emotion at the start of the scene.