Cutting throught the ebook noise

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I feel that way when writers make statements about the quality of their books-- terms that reviewers would make, but which can not be made objectively by the author.

I'm with you on this. I finally just blocked the Author Self-Promotion thread because I was finding the constant hawking more and more annoying.

I too prefer the author promos that come out as a part of a more natural discussion. Authors with more than 10 posts or those who participate in other discussions are a lot more likely to catch my eye (unless I already know their name and/or collect their books).

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Word of mouth only works when you have (a few) readers. Getting those first readers would be the tricky part. The traditional way would be to send out review copies, but then you would be gambling everything on the thoughts of a few individuals. Books, like other entertainment products, are a matter of taste. And with ebooks you can give away a large free sample for people to make their own minds up about. So it would make more sense to me to concentrate on that rather than go down the review route.

I'd combine them, offer the complete book for review to more than a handful of people. If the book is really of stunning quality it will, word of mouth will, without doubt be sufficient to get the book known to the greater public.

[jhempel24]

I don't have much experience with authors promoting their own stuff except in the podcast world. Scott Sigler was a VERY aggressive self-promoter, and while still giving his stuff away for free, got a publishing deal, and the "free" book in podcast form, sold enough to make the NYT Bestsellers list with Contagious.

I think the work speaks more than the author.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by WriterGurl1

I found this site and others like it via recommendations on how to promote my book. I learned instantly that there's a lot more to it than yelling "read my book" every time I post. Now I log on to share in worthwhile discussions and to hone my craft rather than promote anything. I do use my cover as my avatar because I am an indie and nobody is seeing my book on the shelves at the grocery store, but I hope no one considers my methods gorilla marketing

And I've also discovered some great new voices in the process.

You might want to rework your cover so that it works at that size. I can't read any of the text on it, so I would have no way of looking it up if I wanted to.

[JeremyR]

What I think e-publishing needs are DJs.

Today dance music is bigger than ever. People all over the world can make it just by owning a computer. There are dozens, probably thousands of songs being released every week.

DJs basically filter it out. They listen to stuff then pick out the best and play them on their shows. (The same sort of thing happened in the early days of Rock 'n Roll).

So basically a person just has to find a few DJs to follow who play the sort of music they like.

I'm not sure how this would work for books. Books take longer to read than listening to a song. But probably fewer released a week and well, instead of the whole world, it's mostly done by languages.

[MrPLD]

Reviewers / bloggers are probably going to become the "DJ's" by your analogy.

Paul.

[ficbot]

I totally get what you're saying about needing a filter. My filter for myself is as follows:

1) Some genres I just ignore. Past experience as a reader has told me they are not my thing.
2) Obnoxious authors, I ignore. Self-promotion is fine, but in non-obnoxious ways. For example, an author here only posted in their own thread and kept bumping it, complaining that nobody had read the book or that X people had downloaded it and none had reviewed it on Amazon. That just screams amateur to me.
3) Spelling/grammar mistakes or just bad writing in the blurb turn me away.
4) If we get this far (genre I like, interesting blurb, author playing nice) I will read the sample. If I like the sample, I'll buy the book

I do think reviewers will start to establish themselves and be the new taste-makers to a growing extent. I keep thinking of the parallels to my exercise video group---another niche market. Over time, I found that certain people seemed to share the same tastes as me, so I would especially notice reviews by them. I could reliably judge whether I would like a workout or not by what they thought of it...

[kcmay]

I agree with Ficbot for all except #1. I don't care for certain types of genres, and I tend not to browse for them at all. But I've taken chances on writers based on their input in discussion threads (other than their self-promo), and in some cases I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the book. Admittedly, those books didn't suddenly turn me onto the genre, but I more than got my money's worth.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It's an interesting conundrum. On one hand, I've tried to promote my books mainly by participating in threads on MR and at other sites, and tried to keep aggressive self-promotion controlled. On the other hand, I've watched my sales nosedive in the last year, and came to realize I may not have been promoting myself enough!

Subtle self-promo on a site like MR is fine... provided those people buy your books, like them, and enthusiastically tell others outside of MR to check them out. In absence of that, an author must work harder to sell their material, it's just the nature of the business now.

I don't have a problem with aggressive self-promotion... like any other ad, I can tune it out whenever I want to. But any self-promotion gives you a chance to learn about a product, or its creator, and I take advantage of that. Well-constructed promotions with good grammar and spelling, descriptions that actually get the story idea across, and of course, links to excerpts, reviews or other material, usually tell you the real story about a book before you ever buy it.

Yes, some are very over-zealous... sometimes that alone tells you all you need to know about a book. But I'd suggest you try to be a bit tolerant: This whole process of authors self-promoting themselves online is a fairly new one, and the bugs are still getting worked out; and in your haste to brush off an aggressive ad, you might miss a real gem of a book out there.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by kcmay

I agree with Ficbot for all except #1. I don't care for certain types of genres, and I tend not to browse for them at all. But I've taken chances on writers based on their input in discussion threads (other than their self-promo), and in some cases I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the book. Admittedly, those books didn't suddenly turn me onto the genre, but I more than got my money's worth.

I tend to go more by writer than anything else, the assumption being that if I have liked one of their books in the past there is a good chance I will like their new one. Some of the writers I like write in multiple genres, and I have discovered other writers through collaborations with them.

Completely new writers (to me) I would only really find through genre selection, and even then only when there isn't anything new from the writers who have already made my reading list. Another way to make it onto there would be if I read something by them in a genre short story collection and it interested me enough to see what else they had written. Short story collections need to be free for me to look at them, I don't know how feasible it would be to get together with similar writers and put one out on Smashwords, etc but that would be worth looking into.

I don't read reviews and don't take much notice of the pimp your own books forum in here. But I do see the mini-pimps that people add as a sig to their posts elsewhere. Never bought anything as a result of them, but at least I am aware of them. I've also downloaded a lot of free offer books from Smashwords that have been advertised in the deals section, but never read any of them. Two of them made it onto my reading device for a few months, but never got any nearer than that.

[Scott Nicholson]

Amazon's new program to allow affiliate sales from ebooks will help a lot. Bloggers will have a vested interest in finding and promoting good books beyond the bestsellers that everyone else is trying to sell. Those who are good at it will earn more money and in turn have more interest in telling other people about good new books.

Scott

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by Scott Nicholson

Amazon's new program to allow affiliate sales from ebooks will help a lot. Bloggers will have a vested interest in finding and promoting good books beyond the bestsellers that everyone else is trying to sell. Those who are good at it will earn more money and in turn have more interest in telling other people about good new books.

There's unfortunately also the slight risk they will consider any time they spend reviewing a book an investment and thus promote any book they review to increase sales, and thus their revenue. There's thus far relatively view blogs of book reviews I have seen that and fit my taste genre wise and promote good books. So far, the book review section in The New Yorker hits home way more often.

[meromana]

Originally Posted by Soldim

There's unfortunately also the slight risk they will consider any time they spend reviewing a book an investment and thus promote any book they review to increase sales, and thus their revenue.

Yes, there is certainly a risk of exactly what you are saying, but on the other hand, I think most book reviewers/bloggers will quickly learn that if they're less than genuine in their review, people who buy on their recommendation will be disappointed and not return for more reco's. The only way to build a following as a book blogger is to give honest reviews.

--Maria

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Until I reach a point where I'm no longer able to find mainstream books I'm interested in, it's unlikely I'll put much effort into sifting through the self-promotion for self-published gems.

It's not like music where you could make a legitimate argument that most mainstream material is crap.

[GA Russell]

I agree with both of Manos's points regarding fiction. However, I have bought and enjoyed a couple of self-published non-fiction books on a topic of interest to me.