Marketing Question Kindle Unlimited

[Loosheesh]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The problem is that more often than not these names are completely random - there just because they're famous/well known and the genre is the same, the book itself has no similarities whatsoever in style, plot or characters. So they don't help the reader at all.

^This. I bought a book one time because it claimed to be in the style of Jane Austen. It was so not, and I was totally annoyed about that. Plus, the book itself was plain mediocre. And, later, the Amazon had the nerve to recommend the author's next book to me ... I kissed my teeth and swiped.

Expectations matter to me, so I don't trust the "for fans of" label.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Readirect

The FIRST thing a literary agent will ask a prospective author/client is for comparables ... which author/book your book is like ... AND they do that because THAT'S what they pitch to publishers AND THAT'S LITERALLY the whole "For fans of" thing. Anyone who tells you NOT to do that is someone who thinks they know more than they do.

The problem for me is that all too often the list of authors seems to have been created at random. One recent book I looked at dug back and listed Hal Clement, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson and Robert L. Forward as similar authors. So I would expect hard science fiction and great world building—think about Mesklin for instance.

I've had a love affair with science fiction since I was a tween so I downloaded a sample. Hmmm... demons, fae, magic, sloppy world building and that was just in the first chapter of the sample. Mission of Gravity, Ring World, Dragon’s Egg or Tau Zero they were not.

[Yapyap]

I should say that as someone in a country where KU isn’t available (and who does her book-buying mostly on Kobo these days) this is sort of a non-issue in general, since if you put your book on KU where it’s exclusive for Amazon customers, chances are I’ll never see nor, obviously, buy it…

But in general, things that put me off instantly unless it’s a book I already know I want (mainstream publishers seem to be doing this as well now) … the aforementioned “for fans of…” is one thing, but something I really hate is starting off a description with “27,000 five star reviews on Amazon / Goodreads” or similar. Yeah, no, I don’t care how many bots or sockpuppets have given 5* reviews to this. (I tend to view books with only 5* reviews with suspicion, if I look at stars at all. They don’t seem genuine.)

Also half a page of praising quotes from this or that publication or blog or author before one even gets to the description. I don’t care.

There are a gazillion ebooks available. I’ll have maybe 5 seconds to spare to take a look and decide whether to move on or take a closer look. So a cover, title, and the first sentence of the descriptive bit, essentially. If those make me look for more, it’s the description of what the book is about that I want, not “other people have read it and liked it”.

Oh, and if the title on the store page is something like “Fae Demons - A TikTok dark academy romantasy sensation that pulls on your heartstrings and leaves you shaken to the core” etc … forget about it. (This reminds me - if there is “BookTok” or “TikTok” in the description, that’s a good indication this book is not for me and I’ll move on, LOL.)

Originally Posted by Readirect

The FIRST thing a literary agent will ask a prospective author/client is for comparables … which author/book your book is like … AND they do that because THAT’S what they pitch to publishers AND THAT’S LITERALLY the whole “For fans of” thing. Anyone who tells you NOT to do that is someone who thinks they know more than they do.

In fact, when an author with a distinct style … like Robert B. Parker, for instance … dies/retires then one strong opportunity is to write a similar type of book with his/her style; telling readers what they will be getting (e.g. for fans of Robert B. Parker.)

I can well believe agents want that.

I’m not an agent or a publisher though but a reader with considerable book-reading experience, and as a reader, I really dislike those comparisons. As others here have said, they mostly just seem to be a bunch of random well-known names thrown together in the hopes of roping in unsuspecting potential buyers.

[Dr. Drib]

^^^^^

I love descriptions like this that you quoted: "Fae Demons - A TikTok dark academy romantasy sensation that pulls on your heartstrings and leaves you shaken to the core”

It helps me to immediately roll right past it and go to another book.

I would say this to publishers: Continue to do this, because the stench of such a description really does help me to move on.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Readirect

The FIRST thing a literary agent will ask a prospective author/client is for comparables ... which author/book your book is like ... AND they do that because THAT'S what they pitch to publishers AND THAT'S LITERALLY the whole "For fans of" thing. Anyone who tells you NOT to do that is someone who thinks they know more than they do.

In fact, when an author with a distinct style ... like Robert B. Parker, for instance ... dies/retires then one strong opportunity is to write a similar type of book with his/her style; telling readers what they will be getting (e.g. for fans of Robert B. Parker.)

There are other authors continuing some of Robert B. Parker's series. So no need to read books written for fans of.

And I cannot stand when we get for fans or or if you like.

If the book has a stupid title such as The Fellowship of the Ring: Discover Middle-earth in the Bestselling Classic Fantasy Novels before you watch 2022's Epic New Rings of Power Series (The Lord of the Rings Book 1) and I've never read the author and I have no recommendations for this book or author, I'll skip right past it. S make sure the title isn't stupid like this sample. There has to be a way to get Amazon to not make book titles stupid.

[Sirtel]

Personally I don't care whether the title has been stuffed or not - I don't even read that and go straight to the synopsis. If I like the synopsis and the cover is not awful, I'll look inside and if I like what I read there, I might buy/borrow the book. Even when the title is a mile long and the blurb has the dreaded "for fans of..." - in most cases I just ignore all that. What is more likely to put me off is too little description - a short, nondescript title and a synopsis consisting of a couple of equally nondescript sentences. If such a combination also has a weird cover, I'll move on immediately.

Browsing books in a store is basically the only way I find books - I don't do recommendations, book sites like Goodreads or social media. So for me, better unnecessary fillers than too little information.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

^^^^^

I love descriptions like this that you quoted: “Fae Demons - A TikTok dark academy romantasy sensation that pulls on your heartstrings and leaves you shaken to the core”

It helps me to immediately roll right past it and go to another book.

I would say this to publishers: Continue to do this, because the stench of such a description really does help me to move on.

Ha, that is a good point indeed. It certainly makes it easier! (And also fair enough I suppose, for people who do enjoy dark academy romantasy TikTok sensations, it’s helpful as well. I’m all for people reading what they enjoy, really.)

Re: long, description-stuffed titles in general .. I mean, most of the time it doesn’t matter to me much as I have all my books de-DRM-d and in Calibre, with the extra stuff removed etc. But when I was testing whether my Oasis battery held better after a factory reset, I downloaded some of my Amazon purchases straight to the device from Amazon and ..

I don’t use the book cover grid view on my devices, I use the list view with titles and authors, and it was just incredibly ugly to see them like that. I’d somehow assumed the descriptive bit would automatically get dropped, but it didn’t, at least for some of those books, so I guess at least for those it was entered as an actual part of the title itself. (I forget now which ones as I removed them from device immediately.)