UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Just looking round for review sites (something authors do occasionally when they feel 'something ought to be done'.

Pretty much all the big ones high up in the google ranks seem to be 'closed for submissions' (and I'd assume they were the sites people would find.)

You can see why people start contemplating charging for reviews.

I've just worked out that I will have to set up my own review site, charging £1 per 1000 words for each book I review. (Please include payment with the book,)
By my reckoning that'll bring in about £30k a year which is a damned site more than I'll ever earn by writing :-)

Jim's devious mercenary machinations aside, it strikes me that getting reviews is every bit as tricky as getting anything else!

Wow!

I should quit my day job!

my thinking entirely :-)

The problem with that is Amazon won't allow paid reviews in the consumer review section, where authors generally want the reviews to post. A paid review can only go in the "editorial review" section and will not contribute to the star rating. Some reviewers make money by establishing a book review blog and charging for advertising space on their site.

pondering you might get round it by charging for 'editing advice'

If the book was 'complete' you'd review it, if it wasn't and needed work you'd email back suggestions. So you only reviewed the good ones and the others got helpful advice

Jim wrote: "pondering you might get round it by charging for 'editing advice'

If the book was 'complete' you'd review it, if it wasn't and needed work you'd email back suggestions. So you only reviewed the go..."

You do know there are ten thousand people with this business model out there already, don't you?

That said, I like your blog. I'd consider it.

The sad fact is that the market is flooded with self-pubbed books. Some are good, most are not.

The gatekeepers used to be the publishers. When they started receiving more submissions than they could handle, they shifted responsibility to agents. Few reasonably large publishers these days will look at un-agented submissions.

Then the gatekeeping role was shifted to the reviewers. Now they too are getting flooded. The big review sites are having to restrict the number of books they look at.

You could start up your own review site, but the problem will always be that until you are well known, readers won't come to your site and authors won't want to pay money for you to review them unless you have readers.

I haven't a clue what the answer is. Maybe we're seeing the beginning of the end of the golden era for self-pubbed books, in the same way that computer games became more professional. In the early days of home computers, a teenager could write a best-selling game in their bedrooms. Now it needs a team of dozens if not hundreds of specialists to write a computer game.

Jim, you could run a sideline in charging authors £500 to make £501.

Rosen wrote: "Jim, you could run a sideline in charging authors £500 to make £501."

ah the standard consultancy ;-)

Will wrote: "The sad fact is that the market is flooded with self-pubbed books. Some are good, most are not.

The gatekeepers used to be the publishers. When they started receiving more submissions than they co..."

I think you've as much chance of being right with that prediction as anybody Will. We're certainly in a rapidly evolving situation and it's going to be interesting to see how the new gatekeepers develop.
Because readers want gatekeepers because they don't want to waste time sifting through what are percieved to be great heaps of dross

An online book trader who edits grammar and spelling and refuses to sell anything under par would be a start, although how they would solve the problem of the time consumed being a dross sieve, I have no idea.

Elizabeth wrote: "An online book trader who edits grammar and spelling and refuses to sell anything under par would be a start, although how they would solve the problem of the time consumed being a dross sieve, I h..."

well the maths are simple enough
Somebody to read through and clear out the dross. Check out three books a day.There are apparently 261 working days a year so that's 783 books a year
Salary? Assume they're working from home so say £20k so that's £25 a book.

Note for this they're saying it's OK or they're dropping it in the bin, there is no other feedback provided.

It might be wise to have two people with different tastes going through the same heap, or for example, if it had been me doing it The Catcher in the Rye would never have seen the light of day.
So that works out at £50 a book.

So Amazon sets up a system where each author has to pay in £50 for every book when they publish it, and Amazon take on a lot of contractors paid £25 a book

Now there are about 500,000 books a year published in US and UK, and I think most are non-fiction. So if we say 200,000 fiction titles in English, that would create 255 new jobs or perhaps 500+ part time ones :-)

Review swaps, when each purchases the other's efforts. They can get plastered over all the Amazon sites and Goodreads. They are verified purchase, and consumer, not editorial reviews. They cost time but only minimal readies. Who contributing to this group isn't an author?

As I wander round the Internet wondering if there are potential readers out there, I find that most of the people I encounter are in the same boat. Would a thread dedicated to matching review-swappers be in order?

I think review swapping is 'paying' for a review in another guise. Not keen. Many of this group's regulars aren't authors. You'll meet quite a few on the Morning thread.

Some of us would naturally choose to read one another's books because we like the genre. Some people's books I wouldn't read. Our choice should be based just on just that, not on owing them a review.

David wrote: "Review swaps, when each purchases the other's efforts. They can get plastered over all the Amazon sites and Goodreads. They are verified purchase, and consumer, not editorial reviews. They cost tim..."

my system would work on the paid reader not doing reviews, just junking books. They wouldn't get to chose other than genre, Amazon would send them stuff so it'd be pretty random

David wrote: "Review swaps, when each purchases the other's efforts. They can get plastered over all the Amazon sites and Goodreads. They are verified purchase, and consumer, not editorial reviews. They cost tim..."

I'm not an author David

Or how about a dedicated Web Site?

Kath wrote: "I think review swapping is 'paying' for a review in another guise. Not keen. Many of this group's regulars aren't authors. You'll meet quite a few on the Morning thread.

Some of us would naturall..."

I'll take a further step from not keen to saying I feel dishonest.

Apologies, Flo, for impugning you!

I agree that 'Review Swapping' is 'paying' for a review. The benefits to the participating authors, however, are:
1. Payment with time, which the penniless, starving authors may have in abundance, rather than cash, which might be in short supply.
2. The opportunity for feedback from someone who has also been there, done that and got the T-shirt.

I don't agree that swapped reviews need be dishonest. Suppose there are a myriad typos. Rather than posting a snotty 1-star review, the list can be passed back to the author for correction, to the benefit not just of the author, but of any subsequent readers. In such a case, I personally would see nothing wrong with posting a review that assumed that the typos have been fixed. I have read 'pre-publication' for-review paperbacks from Waterstone's HQ that were full of typos. The reviews in the papers didn't mention them, and they had gone by the time the books hit the shelves.

Kath: Some people's books I wouldn't read.

Oh dear :(

Our choice should be based just on just that, not on owing them a review.

There'd be no obligation to participate. The issues around pairing up authors were what led me to suggest a Web Site as an alternative, so that software could perhaps identify compatible pairings based on genre preference and word count, for instance.

Amazon's 'Kindle Scout' initiative looks to be an attempt by Amazon themselves to take on the gate-keeper role, whilst committing minimal resource. Find 100 people to endorse your effort, and they'll pay you an advance.

I simply mean I wouldn't read some books because they're romance or zombies.

There's nothing to stop people asking for beta readers who can help with the typo business. They might review, too. I usually do. But I don't ask for a review in return. I feel that's not on.

Too many writers, not enough readers.

Over a lifetime, the average person will read about 2000 books. Having decided that life is short, and I'd rather fill that time by reading the classics, I feel for anybody who is snowed under by people wanting reviews.

I can sympathize with the writer, but it's all about time management for me.

David wrote: "Apologies, Flo, for impugning you!

I agree that 'Review Swapping' is 'paying' for a review. The benefits to the participating authors, however, are:
1. Payment with time, which the penniless, star..."

No apology necessary David and definitely no impugnation (?)..... I wish I had it in me to be an author! The most I can manage is some short stories and some personal-type poems!!

So who pays the beta-readers for their time? The reaction to Jim's '£1 per 1,000 words' says it all; beta-readers aren't getting paid. Which rather limits the pool of beta-readers.

People want to write, whether they are paid to or not. So publishers are happy to let them do so. Quality control? They're happy to wash their hands of that as well. Actually the traditional publishers were never that good at picking winners (think of all the rejections that JK Rowling received) so they now crowd-source them; think EL James.

The 180,000 Goodreads Authors is testimony that the strategy works for them.

But the consequence is that no money at all is going into what, in a manufacturing environment, would be described as 'up-stream'.

Boosting the money supply boosts economic activity. Which brings me back to the 'review swap'. Authors need reviews for success. That is the reality. Success is still success, whether it is 'deserved' or 'undeserved'. By holding fast to the traditional "it's not polite to solicit reviews" etiquette, we are collectively cutting our own throats.

And what's the worst thing that could happen? Amazon being spammed by a deluge of 'dishonest' reviews? Well, perhaps then they or the publishers will be forced to put a bit of money into Quality Control!

Flo: The most I can manage is some short stories and some personal-type poems!!

So, you are an author! There's no obligation to have penned 'War and Peace' before anointing yourself!

David wrote: "So, you are an author! There's no obligation to have penned 'War and Peace' before anointing yourself! "

Absolutely!

Very kind both, but I was thinking more about published authors and the horrors of promotion, that it seems you lot have to go through. I haven't got that much dedication and I admire you all....... without your tenacity, I wouldn't have anything to read!

Even with loads of reviews, the reader still has to find your book, and there's a pretty slim chance on Amazon of just coming across it browsing. Promotion either takes an inordinate amount of time and/or produces dire results.
I think the simple truth is that the High Street is still the most popular place for finding a book. So, it occurs to me that what we need is a specialist indie bookshop and someone who can print books and promotional material at competitive prices. Get people in the shop - they can pay for a paperback, have it printed while you wait, or buy the ebook there and then. Give them a coffee and a comfy sofa while they wait.

The selection process is easily solved - participating authors put up £500 per book, as a shareholder in the business, to be repaid, hopefully, through annual dividends. Only serious authors will have the courage.

C'mon guys, one of you must be a Lottery jackpot winner wondering where to invest the cash!

One of the London bookshops did have a print on demand machine which did what you say, have a coffee whilst it was printing your book. I saw it in operation but I don't think it lasted more than a couple of years.

But you're right with Amazon reviews, they're nice but frankly by the time the reader reads them, they've found your book. The big problem is getting them to find the book in the first place and Amazon reviews don't especially help.
Reviews in other places are perhaps more useful. I think http://bookhippo.uk/self-publishing/w... has a nice discussion on it because it's taken ideas from several of us

The review-hunter's El Dorado is 100 reviews on Amazon.com. Because if you achieve that, Amazon start putting their own money into your promotion. Blanket e-Mails, nudges whilst you're browsing their site ... Short of putting big bucks into mass advertising I doubt that there is much we can do that would measure up to that.

I saw an Amazon Print-on-demand paperback about 6 months ago. There have certainly been mass-market paperbacks printed in the past that were inferior, but it didn't measure up to the best contemporary efforts. However, I think the technology is improving all the time.

David wrote: "The review-hunter's El Dorado is 100 reviews on Amazon.com. Because if you achieve that, Amazon start putting their own money into your promotion. Blanket e-Mails, nudges whilst you're browsing the..."

I know that the 100 reviews is much sought after. I've got 62 reviews, unfortunately it's over 17 books

David wrote: "I saw an Amazon Print-on-demand paperback about 6 months ago. There have certainly been mass-market paperbacks printed in the past that were inferior, but it didn't measure up to the best contempor..."

The covers still seem to be the weak point. Even though there's now a choice of finishes -- "rubbery" matt (don't know what the technical term is, but you know it when you feel it) and gloss, they still have a tendency to curl, and we're lacking features such as foils and embossing/debossing (okay there are a few places that can do it, but not CreateSpace).

By and large, the insides seem to be pretty well up to snuff, compared to trade p/backs and hardbacks, although again limited to perfect bound.

I'd have preferred a slightly heavier weight of paper, both for the cover and the contents.

I believe that review swapping is against Amazon's TOS.
The only really successful marketing is word-of-mouth. Unfortunately no one seems to know how to harness this.

I don't believe there's a problem with review swaps if:
1. The books are purchased from Amazon
2. The reviewers aren't obviously associated
3. The reviews are honest.

There are no humans looking at this; just stupid bits of software, preventing multiple reviews of the same product emanating from the same household, and barring all reviews from people with life-time Amazon purchases amounting to less than $50. As long as the reviews are honest, that won't change, since they will look like all the other reviews.

I self-published my first book on Amazon in 2011, followed by:
book 2, 2012
book 3, 2015
book 4, 2016
book 5, 2016
book 6 2016.
I read somewhere that critical mass for Amazon books is five books.
Indeed, sales did seem to take off around this time (relatively - I can't make a living out of it yet!)
From one or two books a quarter when I started, I sold 150 books in August 2016.
It's dropped to 107 month to date - I think people were buying holiday reads.
I have done no advertising, just accumulated Amazon reviews (that thrill of excitement when a new one appears), converted my Goodreads profile to an author profile in 2015, and created a Book Hippo author profile the other day.
I'm fortunate that a friend proofreads my manuscripts with a very detailed eye.
I'd love to know what the impacts of "Customers also bought items by..." on Amazon author pages and "Customers who bought this item also bought" section on book pages (What a thrill to have Bernard Cornwell and Sam Llewellyn showing on mine!)
Anyone any ideas?
Also, any thoughts on 5 books being critical mass for an Amazon author?

Tim wrote: "David wrote: "I saw an Amazon Print-on-demand paperback about 6 months ago. There have certainly been mass-market paperbacks printed in the past that were inferior, but it didn't measure up to the ..."

I use createspace for my paperbacks. It's actually cheaper to get them printed in the USA and shipped over here than use Amazon's uk print facility. (critical mass is around 6 books and regular shipping). They say it's a 28 day turnaround but I've seldom had to wait more than a fortnight.
I can't fault the interiors (although I send them a mobi file not a pdf, so I know it will come out true.) Go for cream paper for fiction. It's actually paperback 'white'. The covers do let it down. Reproduction is excellent, but the lack of embossing or hot foil imprints separates it from the mainstream paperbacks. Embossing is clearly not feasible for limited production, but I would have thought foil could be managed.

One book is enough if you succeed in capturing the spirit of the age. This year's blockbuster is 'The Girl on the Train'. It's a debut psychological thriller, and there's not even a photo of the author on Amazon's author page for Paula Hawkins. It must have helped that it's published by Penguin Random House, though.

FWIW my publisher reckons that their promotional efforts for a book have no impact unless there are at least 5 reviews on Amazon, and they are looking for patterns like this. You can be sure that Penguin Random House ensured that this was the case with 'The Girl on the Train' even before it was officially launched.

David wrote: "One book is enough if you succeed in capturing the spirit of the age. This year's blockbuster is 'The Girl on the Train'. It's a debut psychological thriller, and there's not even a photo of the au..."

Only if they bother to market it for you. Mostly they don't.

As for Kindle Scout which someone mentioned earlier, like all these things it seems to be less about publishing and more about which author has the biggest social media following.

I gave up submitting to review sites ages ago. Most of them are American and won't touch my work with a barge pole.

The new buzz is email lists, which makes sound sense to me, but if everyone is growing their email list soon people are going to be on tons of them and open, read and click rates will drop.

When it comes to print I use lightningsource/Ingram. Amazon penalise you but it puts your book with all the main wholesalers and the standard distribution package is way ahead of anything Createspace can offer.

I have five books out but it certainly isn't critical mass for me, although I've heard that critical mass for my genre is six! Phnark.

There's my twopennorth, anyway.

e-Mail lists do nothing to increase your visibility, unless you're buying them. The reader has to have found you in order for you to be in a position to capture their e-Mail. I don't think anyone need be particularly concerned about author e-Mail list saturation. People conducting business on the Internet have been flooding mail-boxes for years. If your e-Mails aren't too frequent, and contain material valued by the recipients (e.g. short stories, yes ... latest trip to Asda, no) your readers will continue to click on them.

Out of interest, does anyone open the monthly Goodreads e-Mail before deleting it?

What eMail is that?

No, seriously.

I actually get three; 'New Releases', 'News Letter', and 'Author News Letter'.

Or are you objecting to my hyphenation of e-Mail, which I have been doing since 1984???

I don't get any emails from goodreads.

I get New Releases, YA and, bizarrely, since I don't read it, Romance. I open and read all but the last.

I'm sure I unticked boxes in settings years ago to make sure I get no emails.

I suppose I need to go through my profile settings. But it illustrates my point. Goodreads have my e-Mail address, and they send me dross, and I ignore it.

Mentor Graphics have my e-Mail address, and send me stuff I always find interesting, and occasionally useful, and I read it.

Microsoft used to send me stuff, they certainly could have sent me interesting stuff, but what they sent me was so relentlessly up-beat, sales-y and counter-factual that I gave up on it, and after sending me a message 'Subject: We notice you haven't opened one of our e-Mails for a year' they stopped.

I think the e-Mail approach has one huge advantage over blogging, however. You don't have to produce as much quality material, since you shouldn't be sending it out more than once a month, maybe less frequently. However, it doesn't free you from the pain of having to keep juggling the text on your web-site to maintain Search Engine ranking :(.