An author I met online asked me to review his self-published book on my blog. I planned to politely decline the offer. I’m an incredibly critical reader and, let’s be honest, self-pubbed books have a bad but well-deserved reputation. They are generally poorly written, badly edited (if at all) examples from amateur writers who, rather than spend time perfecting their craft and developing their skills, rush off to self-publish after a few rejections, because “nobody understands their work.”
I had no expectation that this book would be any different. Unfortunately, the author seemed to be a nice person and I didn’t want to (a) hurt their feelings and (b) give a bad review for a book they are trying to market and sell on their own.
Then I got an e-mail from another writer I met online, who turned out to be the same person, writing under a nom de plume. That put a completely different spin on things. I have read some of this writer’s work, and it was well written, engaging and intelligent; just in a completely different genre.
This immediately changed my mind, and I set out to purchase the book. Sadly the story does not end well, as I was unable to purchase using any of the offered methods. Yet another issue to deal with when selling your work online!
The experience made me think about being a new writer, and marketing, and how to tempt buyers to purchase your novel over the thousands of competing tomes (e-tomes?) out there.
My purchasing decision had a complete turnaround because I now had confidence in the writer’s product. Based on his other work, I knew I could be reasonably sure of three things; the writer had a good mastery of language, the writer could tell an engaging story and the writer could present his story professionally. The story had a very good chance of being well written; whether I liked or disliked the story, it would not be due to the writer’s ability to write.
Before I knew this, I was being asked to take a chance on a completely unknown writer; one whose work I had never read before, and I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I had no confidence in the product the writer was trying to sell, because I had no confidence in the writer.
Now if this had been a print book, it would have been a slightly different story. If it was an author I read often, then I usually pick up the book after a cursory glance at the back cover blurb. But if it’s a new author, one I’ve never heard of, then I’m more circumspect in my buying habits. I scruitinise the cover. Read the blurb at the back. Read the first few pages, and perhaps a few excerpts, to see if the writer is saying something I’m interested in hearing more about. Then I make the decision to purchase, or not.
You can’t do that with an e-book. There are no virtual shelves to scan for the latest titles. I wouldn’t even know where to look to buy an ebook – Amazon I suppose. But then the author has to figure out a way to make that book stand out from the thousands (millions?) of other books.
If you already have a following, then you don’t have to worry about getting your book to an audience; they’re already there. But how does a new author build a following from nothing? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the million dollar question, and I suspect is the difference between a flop, a mid-lister and a NYT bestseller. Sorry I don’t have an answer to the question.
Based on this experience, I will be working hard to get some really professional work up here, hopefully to impress readers with my talent and skill. (Don’t worry, the hysterical laughter fades after a while.) I have also been reading some tips on marketing online; there’s quite a lot out there.
It has been a very enlightening experience for me as a writer and a blogger.
3 Comments
June 27, 2009 at 2:00 am
There are some e-book publishers out there who fulfill the same function as book publishers do: vetting that the author can actually write. That’s not the same thing as self-publishing, because e-book is the medium the story is produced in. The last site I remember scanning you got to read the back copy equivalant and maybe an excerpt before buying.
I would start a search to buy e-books by looking for these publishers and then make sure they don’t have any horror stories about not paying authors. Amazon offers e-books, but I don’t know how much DRM crap is with their selections and the Kindle reader.
June 27, 2009 at 10:14 am
To be honest with you, I believe that e-publishers want one thing only. Your money. Your book is a business to them on a completely different level than a standard publishing house. Not many unknown writers have that sort of cash to spew out of their mouths like the unpublished garbage they slop onto a page. I struggle to get by, writing articles and basic little freelancing gigs, and all the while pouring every ounce of trained talent into the novels that I have written. Write because you enjoy it first and foremost, then consider it on the business level. Bah, I ramble too much.
July 4, 2009 at 7:57 am
Interesting. I have been put on the spot to review Ebooks a few times as well. I always end up not doing it because it’s just not the primary function of my site….
But to me it seems … dishonest (shady?) for someone to run around propositioning aquired contacts to review and promote a book they’ve written, backing them into a corner, almost guilting them into writing a positive review.
Instead they should just let us know they’ve written it, and leave the unspoken decision of whether or not to review it on our sites up to us.
If the book’s any good, given time, there’ll be positive unbiased reviews out there promoting the book anyway, right?
So then there’s the question of whether the person with the best book really wins, or is it the person with the best networking skills? Or the person with the most money?
I’d like to believe every published author out there fought the hard fight, but, a lot of the time, the answer is unfortunately the cynical one.