UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

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


I would never object to the way anyone spells anything on any of the threads in this group. And some people like hyphens, some like ellipses... : )

David wrote: "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, ..."

I really enjoy doing emails. Like you say, I think it's important to try to make them interesting, or include something of value but if I can't do either of those, I find just making them funny works quite well. I also recommend books - although, nothing I haven't read - and join with other authors to do free mailings so I send information out about a page showing 40 books that are free over a short period and they send the information out to their mailing lists. We all get folks downloading our books and after that more usually sign up to our lists.

Email doesn't give my books any visibility but I'm not 100% sure visibility will sell my books, it's enthusiastic recommendations from folks who have already them that works best, followed by optimising listings, but that doesn't really work any more as too many others are doing it and the listings are weighted in favour of sales too, which is why so many genre categories on Amazon have just turned into subcategories of Romance.

Also it does give me a direct line of contact to my customers in a way social media doesn't and I control it, rather than the whims of facebook.

I hardly ever mention my books, I blog, and email, about life, the universe and everything - which does include trips to Asda but only if they are funny. I think that is an advantage for humour authors, though, we can talk about normal life if we make it amusing enough.

M.T. wrote: I hardly ever mention my books, I blog, and email, about life, the universe and everything - which does include trips to Asda but only if they are funny. I think that is an advantage for humour authors, though, we can talk about normal life if we make it amusing enough.

I'm sure that's right. In fact, in my opinion, all books need some humour. A friend of mine wrote what amounted to Fanny Hill transported to the 21st Century with all trace of humour expunged, and only my loyalty to her enabled me to finish it. Look at this one.

Today, I’m so excited to share with you what’s coming up in When on Name Removed to Protect the Guilty. This month, in addition to my book reviews, discover which books you can vote for in my monthly competition and hear an advance preview of a special announcement coming up for authors. Check all this out and find out which author will be next up inName removed to protect the guilty in my short video below.

If it gushed any more the Environment Agency would be issuing flood warnings. What on earth possessed me to sign up for that? Or is it just me?

David wrote: "M.T. wrote: I hardly ever mention my books, I blog, and email, about life, the universe and everything - which does include trips to Asda but only if they are funny. I think that is an advantage fo..."

Mwah hahargh! Absolutely. That's awful. Mind you, it sounds like someone who bangs out about five 20k 'books' about shape shifter shagging each month!

I've seen a couple of those but luckily the lists I'm signed up to seem to be genuinely decent folks. I am getting slightly weary of folks who are experts referring other experts. I follow a few of the usual ones, and trouble is, if one of them launches something, all the others I follow tell me about it, do a webinar with the person launching a course and offer the course to me.

It can get wearing, although if you listen to all the webinars you get quite a good depth of information, despite the repetition! I've had to unsubscribe from a few though as I was getting too many emails selling things and not enough of the original, interesting content I signed up for!

I would love to walk into a bookshop and see a sign up over a shelf saying "Shape Shifter Shagging"!

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: I would love to walk into a bookshop and see a sign up over a shelf saying "Shape Shifter Shagging"!

You've convinced me. It's going in my next book. Actually, thinking about it, it's in my last one ... (Is that shameless self-promotion?).

The trouble is the social marketing experts live in the same space as we do. They need the cross-links and back links and sales pitch tweaks to raise their Search Engine Page Ranking, just as we do.

I've just had an invitation to spend $295 with a service that will find me 20 Amazon Top Reviewers to review my book.

I pay the service, they spam all the Vine reviewers they can find until 20 agree to review.

Anyone got some time on their hands could do that.

And the several hundred that they spammed who didn't agree will undoubtedly hate the very mention of your name

Doesn't strike me as a particularly good strategy but an easy way to earn $295

Will who?

Will wrote: "I've just had an invitation to spend $295 with a service that will find me 20 Amazon Top Reviewers to review my book.

I pay the service, they spam all the Vine reviewers they can find until 20 agr..."

If they find you 20 Top Reviewers who make their contact information available and who respond to an email, they have done the labours of Hercules.

I've spent a lot of time trying to find a few who might like Pride's Children (from their comments on other books) AND who are not hidden behind a wall of secrecy - for 1 response out of about 10 who said he might be interested - and never read.

I don't have that kind of time when my brain is on, so I can't. But I've tried, and found it extremely time-consuming with a zero ROI.

Ask for some proof before forking over the money.

I reckon the best advice I've heard is to not expend too much time and energy in pointless marketing but to use it to write the next book.

Not that my opinion matters as I'm not a writer.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I reckon the best advice I've heard is to not expend too much time and energy in pointless marketing but to use it to write the next book.

Not that my opinion matters as I'm not a writer."

There's a fair bit of truth in that though Patti. ;-)

I listen when you lot speak. :)

Patti, I don't think I agree with your advice, and here's why.

I can't, of course, speak for anyone else, but my story begins when I decided I wanted to write a novel. I wrote it for myself. I had no idea whether there would be an audience for it, and made no concessions to it. When I'd finished, I had something that I enjoyed reading, but I struggled to work out what genres it belonged in. I applied to three literary agents, and got no responses. My novel became published on Amazon almost by accident, since I was simply investigating what was involved, and it was so easy that I thought, what the heck, I'll have a long stop backup, and if I set a price it will deter casual purchases, and so it proved. At this point I was the only person who had ever read it. My attempts to identify a Beta-reader revealed my secret to my family, and led to domestic ructions ("What? All that time I thought you were trying to write a Killer Software App and you've actually been writing a NOVEL???"), and a handful of sales. I got encouraging feedback from some more supportive friends, and over several months got most of the typos out. Then I was approached by a publisher, and in effect signed away the lion's share of the royalties in return for the sense of validation. However, the publisher's promotional efforts are proportional to the sales, so it remains entirely up to me to find out if there really is an audience out there.

My domestic situation requires that my budget for this effort is zero.

My publisher tells me that reviews are key.

So I am putting my effort into pursuing reviews.

In my day job, the share between Sales and Marketing and Production is typically 50/50, so I instinctively feel that the promotional effort should be of the same order of magnitude as I actually spent writing the thing.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I reckon the best advice I've heard is to not expend too much time and energy in pointless marketing but to use it to write the next book.

Not that my opinion matters as I'm not a writer."

This David agrees.