Quote:
Originally Posted by M T McGuire
I think that's a great idea. Currently page 99 of Few Are Chosen is running at 22% pf readers somewhat likely or likely to buy the book 58% would read on and 21% are unlikely to buy it. I'm pretty chuffed with that as the average for my genre is 49%. My page 99 is part of a key scene in the book which sets up the premise of the whole trilogy. It's about 10 pages of conversation, an island of calm in the middle of a sea of full-on action!
MTM
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That sums it up, MT. By choosing page 99, you can really strike it rich or strike out. I think Lance's idea is that one chooses a random page, and I don't think it really matters if it's actually page 99 or 98, 100 or even 90, just as long as it's not page 1, 2 or 3.
In my case, it really was page 99, but I had an advantage. The site only allows 2200 characters (I think that was the figure) and my page 99 was about 2800 so I was forced to clip. I clipped a meaningless hangover from the previous page, rather more than just widow lines, so that the sample started with a paragraph, and I ended with a question in the dialogue, even though I could probably just about have got the answer into the field, but nobody wants a half-finished sentence. I don't think that kind of minimal editing is contrary to the idea that the site is intended for.
I originally thought to complain about the small area, cos as I have said elsewhere, books nowadays, both in hc and paper, usually have very close to 400 words per page, and a "word" in the printing world has traditionally been 6 letters, or 7 with the space, or totally 2800 characters. However, the necessity to curtail the page, with the consequent opportunity to choose where the sample begins and ends, persuaded me to keep mum.
The principal value of this site is the comments on one's writing style, plus the fact that comments mostly come from people within the genre you are writing.