How much does the average author get paid?

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

...
EDIT Is that rohndawson link a scam of some kind? I didn't click it but the actual drivenwide website looks like some sort of corporate tool. Just asking anyway....

Yes, it is, and it will probably be nuked by the mod's shortly. I will report it to them, but for future reference you can do so by clicking on the little "!" next to the "KARMA" button.

Good heads-up!

Cheers,
Marc

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Would you mind providing a few links to review sites?

www.sfsite.com is my favourite review site for SF stuff.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

EDIT Is that rohndawson link a scam of some kind? I didn't click it but the actual drivenwide website looks like some sort of corporate tool. Just asking anyway....

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Yes, it is, and it will probably be nuked by the mod's shortly. I will report it to them, but for future reference you can do so by clicking on the little "!" next to the "KARMA" button.

i've taken care of it. thanks both of you and acidzebra for reporting it ; sometimes a slice of potted meat gets through and we don't see it, so we're very glad to have everybody keeping their eyes open and reporting any spam they see.

as marc said, to report a post, click on the blue button with the "!" next to the karma button.

cheers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Reviews from Amazon are no more reliable than those from the publisher themselves... they are all skewed to sell you the book. Reviews should come from a fully-impartial third party, like a site or magazine dedicated to reviewing, not selling.

remember the Kindle reviews based on just photos? Now those were totally useless.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

remember the Kindle reviews based on just photos? Now those were totally useless.

Yep. Most of the early Amazon reviews were from people who'd never used one. They mostly boiled down to critiques of its looks, rants about the evils of DRM and people who weren't readers that didn't understand the appeal of e-ink. They just saw it as an expensive gadget you couldn't even watch movies or play games on. They didn't get why it could be $400 when it wasn't even color.

[nekokami]

Thanks for the links, folks!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

www.sfsite.com is my favourite review site for SF stuff.

I've never gotten an impression of how much SFSite reviews e-books. In the past, I've tried contacting them to review my books, and have never received a response.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Thanks for the links, folks!

You are welcome

The beauty of it is that if you like sff, using the links on these sites it's very, very likely you will find people who share your tastes and have the energy and time to keep them up.

Once in a while I used to want to do a blog review too, but it's just too much work to do it properly, so I used just to do mini-reviews on sffworld and more recently copy and paste to Goodreads since that is a great place to keep track of books read, to read, to get - but then Robert offered me the opportunity to put up reviews of current mostly sf and weird mainstream books I really loved to complement his more fantasy oriented reading.

SFSite, SFRevu and several others multi-review sites are very good but they update once or twice a month and perforce look at only a limited slice of the new sff and related books every month - Emerald City was similar of course but the reviews there are just unbeatable. It's a big pity Ms. Morgan could not sustain the pace though of course it's understandable considering the staggering amount of work involved for which you may get arcs from publishers but are unpaid otherwise and even get nasty criticism once in a while

Regarding e-only books - most book lovers out there do not like them so far, so they shy away from them. Robert put up a review of mine of a recent e-only short novel from a small press and if some more new releases like that cross my path I am ready to read them and ask Robert if he is willing to put them up.

Anyway it does not hurt to ask reviewers to look at e-books. One big problem I encountered though is the perception - which is more widely held than I thought - that e-book readers only pirate books to read them for free. I am doing my best to educate people, but it's not easy for various reasons...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

One big problem I encountered though is the perception - which is more widely held than I thought - that e-book readers only pirate books to read them for free. I am doing my best to educate people, but it's not easy for various reasons...

...Most of which have been outlined around here more than once. I'm not surprised that the prevailing opinion is that all e-books are pirated. That shouldn't preclude the review of good material, though, if it is brought to their attention. How else to get readers into them, after all?

Anyway, I'm not saying they have to review e-books... just that I've never gotten the impression that they have much interest in doing so.

[nekokami]

I suspect there is a similar prejudice against e-only books as against POD.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Anyway, I'm not saying they have to review e-books... just that I've never gotten the impression that they have much interest in doing so.

The problem is that very few people involved in these sites like to read e-books.

There is a very good - one my top 2 alongside Lou Anders at Pyr - sff editor Jonathan Strahan who lives in Australia and due to shipping costs he receives most of his arcs for review, mentioning... in e-form and he emphatically asked everyone not to send him such anymore since it costs him too much to print them out. I think I put a comment on the existence of devices - not 100% if to Mr. Strahan or someone else who wrote in the same vein - that help with e-book reading as opposed to using a pc, or print them out, but usually the answer is "nice but so what, it still does not cut it with me, I want my print book even if it's on my crappy printer"

Very, very entrenched attitude.

Reviewers sometimes try some small presses books including POD, so it's less than a "non-major, no interest thing", but more of a "print pretty please thing"...

[nekokami]

You know, I get this same attitude from people at the university where I work who want to print out web pages to review them....

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I suspect there is a similar prejudice against e-only books as against POD.

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

I think I put a comment on the existence of devices - not 100% if to Mr. Strahan or someone else who wrote in the same vein - that help with e-book reading as opposed to using a pc, or print them out, but usually the answer is "nice but so what, it still does not cut it with me, I want my print book even if it's on my crappy printer"

Very, very entrenched attitude.

At the Edinburgh (Book Festival) I ended up chatting with a fair number of people who had never come across e-book devices before and showed them my e-ink based devices. It was interesting that some people didn't want to really look at the device, just dismissing the idea of such a device without looking at it at all -- they'd already decided it was no good. The rest would look and play with the device(s) quite happily. Mostly they were amazed and impressed with them. Certainly they had a few issues with them (and one or two felt they weren't what they wanted), but these devices do seem to be the sort of thing that most people really need to see and use to understand.

So having them appear in shops (which is happening at least a bit here in the UK) should be a good starting point. As is those of us with them showing them around.....

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I've become convinced that word-of-mouth and direct demo from friends and relatives are probably resulting in 90% of reader sales, worldwide. (Which sounds nice, but it's a damned slow way of selling a product.)

It's hard to convince someone to try something they've already decided they hate...

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I've become convinced that word-of-mouth and direct demo from friends and relatives are probably resulting in 90% of reader sales, worldwide. (Which sounds nice, but it's a damned slow way of selling a product.)

Well, its a slow start, but it is exponential...

As another example, I showed it to my Mum, who has slight eyesight problems and finds small print difficult to read was very taken with the resizing supported by the MobiPocket/Kindle formats. I know she has a lot of friends she would show it too as well. (I may have accidentally backed myself into a Christmas Present for her....)

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

It's hard to convince someone to try something they've already decided they hate...

Unless you are someone they look up to/respect/idolise....