Damn it.
Short End of the Stick
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Yearly Archives: 2012
@RayneHall: Negative Book Reviews to Keep you Laughing
Intro to Rayne Hall’s Funny Negative Book Reviews
After the success of my downloads last weekend, I knew that since I would be opening up my book to thousands of new readers – there was bound to be a negative book review in there somewhere. Well, it happened on Sunday (click here if you want to read it - you can’t please everyone as my mama says).
But, I couldn’t help but be offended! As many times as you tell yourself that you won’t take it personally, and that you won’t let it affect you – well, it did! Until a few hours later when I got an INCREDIBLE one that took the sting off. A few hours later, I saw a tweet that went out: 
So, I responded! This would be perfect for my blog – I needed a good chuckle. She hit the nail on the head – my bad book review came from someone who hadn’t even read the entire book. Rayne’s notes on some of the bad reviews of the classics (like Wuthering Heights) below are simply hysterical.
Rayne Hall’s Funny Book Reviews
Rayne Hall writes subtle horror and outrageous fantasy fiction. She is the author of thirty books in different genres and under different pen names, published by twelve publishers in six countries, translated into several languages. Her short stories have been published in many magazines, e-zines and anthologies. Currently, she tries to regain the rights to her out-of-print books so she can republish them as e-books.
After living in Germany, China, Mongolia and Nepal, she has settled in a small Victorian seaside town in southern England.
I love it when readers who enjoyed my books post positive reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and elsewhere – but negative reviews can be even more fun.
Here’s a selection of my favourites I’ve received over the years:
Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel)
“This book is too long. I had to spend many hours reading it. I’m busy and have other things to do.”
“The character of Queen Matilda is not believable” There’s no Queen Matilda in the book.
“Animal lovers: Do not buy this book! They don’t just sacrifice humans, but horses as well.”
“The women in this story are not as obedient as the Bible says women were in those days.”
“The book didn’t end how I thought it would.”
Bites: Ten Tales Of Vampires (short story anthology)
“The vampires in this book aren’t like Edward Cullen. Most of them totally creep me out.”
“I could have written a vampire story as good as any in this book if the editor had asked me.”
Daughters Of The Dragon (non-fiction)
“How dare this author write about women in China? I checked her credentials: she does not have a degree in sinology.”
Living & Working In Britain (non-fiction)
“I’ve spent three weeks in that country. Trust me, it’s not at all like this.” The author lives in that country.
“If I had time, I’d dash off a book like this myself.”
Living & Working In Germany (non-fiction)
“This is not how I imagine Germany to be.”
“Clearly, the author has never met a real German” The author is a real German.
How To Be A Freelance Journalist (non-fiction)
“I don’t want to do all this work. I just want to be a journalist.”
Writing Fight Scenes (non-fiction)
“I skipped the first twenty chapters because there was nothing of interest in them. I wanted to know how to structure a fight scene and the book doesn’t show that.” Chapter 3 is titled “Structure”.
“What a rip-off! This book contains only six stories!”
Since some of these reviews were written many years ago and I no longer have access to them, I’ve quoted them from memory. The precise wording may have been different.
The Classics: Bad Book Reviews
Negative reviews from someone who clearly doesn’t get it can be annoying – but they can also be a source of hilarity.
I’ve browsed some review sites and found these disdainful comments for famous classics:
Pride And Prejudice (by Jane Austen)
“I found the story incredibly dated.” It was published in 1813.
“This is stupid. Why don’t those girls simply get a job?”
Wuthering Heights (by Emily Bronte)
“There is also animal cruelty, and most of the characters die off at an early age.”
“The book is not as good as the movie.”
Dracula (by Bram Stoker)
“The character of the count is a stereotyped kind of vampire you’ve already seen in two dozen movies.” Stoker’s Count Dracula is the original from which the stereotype evolved.
Grapes Of Wrath (by John Steinbeck)
“What should I care about those people’s problems? I have enough problems of my own.”
Bleak House (by Charles Dickens)
“I’m on page 300 and there is no end in sight.”
Which of these reviews do you find funniest?
If you’re a writer, have you ever received a funny negative review?
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Free Ebook Promotion, or How I Got Ranked with John Grisham in 4 Days
I wouldn’t recommend doing the free ebook promotion how I did it.
I was told to plan 30 days in advance – I started planning the night before.
Amazon gives you 5 days to promote your book for free out of 90 days. Most people tell you to only use 2 or 3 at the most your first time. I used 4 days.
One thing I did right – I tracked and didn’t give up until I reached my goal. I got people involved (on Twitter and Facebook), emailed all my closest friends and family and followed (some of) the wisdom of the authors who had previously gone before me.
I didn’t plan it, and I did it by the seat of my pants. I wasn’t even really sure what the point of giving a book away for free would be. Like I said in my initial post about why I was going to try out the promotion, I was afraid it would “devalue” my book (which was silly because it wasn’t selling more than a few a day anyway). What I didn’t mention was my fear that I was giving Amazon too much power. However, before I decided to enroll in KDP Select (Kindle’s monopoly on my book), my Barnes and Noble Nook ebook wasn’t selling at all. So, I figured I would try it out.
Amazon has 3,000+ new titles going for free nearly every day. The competition is tough.
The Night Before: Planning the Free Kindle Promotion
I decided to start the promotion the day before I ran it. Every post I began reading over the next few days giving tips on how to run a free Kindle book promotion suggested planning a month in advance (giving websites at least three weeks notice about posting). For example, the top site “Pixel of Ink” asked to give at least 30 days notice (probably why I never got on their site).
Before the book promotion, I was selling at my peak 3 ebooks/day. I never reached higher than #300,000 on Kindle’s best seller’s list. The night before I launched the book, I was ranked about 1,500,000 in Amazon’s ebooks. Nothing worth noting. That night, I spent 4-5 hours researching how to promote it.
I had two goals:
- Reach the top 100 of Kindle Free Books Best Sellers
- Break 5 figures in downloads.
I succeeded in both of these goals – I dedicated a LOT of time promoting it. Make sure you have reviews on Amazon before running a Kindle Promotion.
I knew that I needed to get a few of the heavy hitter free ebook blogs on board – ones with 1,000′s and tens of 1,000′s of followers. Every article that I read that night mentioned a few blogs that would help equal success. These are the blogs that the majority of free Kindle seekers go to, and these are the ones who come up first in Google searches. (Novel Publicity published one of the best articles that I found on tips for authors.)
(YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART IF YOU AREN’T AN AUTHOR INTERESTED IN PROMOTIING YOUR EBOOK)
Here’s where I submitted for FREE:
- Digital Book Today (Scroll to the bottom and see #12 to submit. They request that you have at least 10+ reviews with an average of 4+ stars rating. They posted my novel, but Anthony Wessel wasn’t too happy at my last minute submission – please don’t do what I did!)
- eReader News Today (I was supposed to submit three days before the promo & in order to be considered, you have to have a high rating in your reviews for them to post it. My mom was the one who noticed it was up – she happens to subscribe to their Facebook page – I was the first book on their listing!)
- Authors on the Cheap (Facebook page)
- Freebies4Mom (I haven’t seen this listed on any other book site, but she has nearly 200k fans on Facebook & a LOT of mommy fans. Heather’s site pushed my novel over the 5-digit download mark.)
- PAID – Kindle Nation Daily (I took $30 out of my Kickstarter money to market my novel for this promotion. It was worth it)
Other random sites that picked me up, but that you might consider submitting to!
- BookLending.com posted on their Facebook page (35,000 fans on Facebook at the date of this post)
- EReader Updates
- BookGorilla.com
- Mrs. Wizard Blog Spot
Twitter accounts that tweeted about it and will help promote Indie authors:
Obsessively Track ebook Sales
Most articles suggest only promoting your book for 2 out of the 5 days at once. But for me, I was getting more and more momentum every day – I couldn’t give up after 2 days. Perhaps planning would have meant not giving up as many days. But the way I saw it, the more days I was ranking, the more exposure I was getting – to start from ZERO in a few weeks seemed pointless.
At the end of the first day, I was already #57 in the Kindle store’s free Contemporary Fiction, but hadn’t yet ranked anywhere in the entire Kindle store.
The end of the second day, I was getting closer! I was now under the top 200′s of the entire Kindle store, and had climbed to #16 in Contemporary Fiction. Over 3,000 people had downloaded the book so far.
But it wasn’t until the 3rd day (a Friday) that extraordinary stuff started happening. This is when the websites started posting about my book, and downloads were fast and furious.
When I hit #8 in Contemporary Fiction, and saw my name next to THE John Grisham – it was certainly a shock, and made me realize just how many people now had their hands on my novel.
I finally ended the promotion on Saturday night – and with over 11,000 downloads just in the United States (the UK hit didn’t garner nearly as many downloads) and hitting #28 in the entire Kindle Books and #6 in Contemporary Fiction at its peak – I felt like I had set out to accomplish my goals! Now, let’s see what I can do in a day knowing what I know.
The big question was – would I make any money after the promotion was over?
My ranking disappeared for a few hours, and when it reappeared, my novel was certainly higher than it had ever been. It’s now Tuesday and my book has remained around the top 3,000 to 5,000 paid Kindles and I’ve sold more in three days than I had ever sold before in the same time frame.
On a side note, the day after the promo ended – I received my first negative review and a second GREAT review. Unfortunately, the first reviewer didn’t take the time to read the entire book (that’s another blog post altogether – oy, it hurt!), and the second reviewer pleaded with people to FINISH it. YES PLEASE!
What would I do differently in promoting my Kindle?
I would have taken more time to plan, and put more thought into who I would have reached out to.
I would have jacked up the price the day before the promotion (value would have seemed better to those getting the free download).
I would have seeded the community with teasers.
But overall, I’m EXTREMELY happy with how it turned out, and HIGHLY recommend it to other indie authors. Now, it’s time to turn those downloads into a book deal!
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Why I’m Running a Free Kindle Promotion
Today starts the first day of my FREE three day ebook promotion. Amazon gives authors the opportunity to run a free promo for 5 days (can be broken up within the month) total within a 30-day period IF you enroll in KDP Select. KDP Select means that you can not sell your ebook on any other platform (i.e. Barnes and Noble’s Nook), but you do get a few perks.
I was a bit hesitant to do this free promotion for a couple of reasons.
- I didn’t want to cheapen the book’s value (the ebook is already only $2.99 – you can’t get MUCH cheaper than that)
- I would be giving it away for FREE – which means no moolah for me.
- I was skeptical.
However, once I started thinking about the Pros…I couldn’t resist.
First of all, I would be getting incredible exposure that I hadn’t gotten before. This is an opportunity to get in front of possibly 1,000′s of people who will hopefully love the book so much that they won’t be able to resist telling their friends about it.
Secondly, I have a few relationships with mommy bloggers who blog about freebies, and can push it out to their community of 10′s of thousands of other mommys.
Thirdly, watching my book sail up the “Downloads” chart is incredibly exciting. While I’ve only ever cracked the top 30,000 Kindle paid downloads. This morning, I’ve already reached the top 1,000 downloads! WAIT!
As I write this and refresh my page, I’m now in the top 700′s and #57 in Contemporary Fiction Downloads. See what I mean?!!!
Finally, the end goal is publicity, more book sales once the sale ends and hopefully more write-ups.
I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!
Three Questions with Katie McGrath: Advertising Exec and Cabaret Singer
One of my dad’s oldest friend’s, Jim Murphy, introduced me to a few women after he found out I was interviewing powerful, inspiring women. He’s a lucky man to have that many incredible women in his life.
Katie McGrath is Executive VP at Rodgers Townsend, a St. Louis-based, fully integrated advertising agency that serves national clients. She joined them in 1998 and can’t believe how the time has just flown by.
Prior to that she held leadership positions at DIMAC Direct and ClarionDirect. Her career path has been boosted more by great luck and wonderful mentors than sound strategy, and she’s loved every day of it (not counting a dreadful stint in Dallas working for a Sears siding licensee – she doesn’t like to talk about that).
She’s single but lives in a house big enough to accommodate frequent sleepovers with her nieces. Her life’s ambition is to be named Aunt of the Year. She’s the only one in her large family who decided to take a different path from the lawyer/doctor route. We laughed about this, but it’s amazing how much of an impact your siblings’ choices end up having on your life.
My favorite quote of hers was “I’m also better at laughing and sleeping. I wake up in a good mood and tend to stay that way until the day’s end.” – says so much.
1. You mentioned that you’re the only one in your family who isn’t a doctor or a lawyer. So, what do you do that’s better than anyone else in your family?
Katie: Years ago this wouldn’t have occurred to me, but now looking back I wonder if I was better at forging a different path than my siblings. My dad was a warrior and pioneer of sorts, the son of two Irish immigrants who were always broke. He won academic scholarships to high school, college and law school, so he was all brains, yet he also was a WWII hero, winning the Naval Silver Star for heroism aboard his battleship in the south Pacific.I’m not saying I’m smart or brave like my dad, but I believe am like him in that I didn’t feel it necessary to do what my family expected me to do, or anybody else, for that matter. My siblings seemed to feel compelled to walk a prescribed road.
I’m also better at laughing and sleeping. I wake up in a good mood and tend to stay that way until the day’s end.
2. If you could give one tip to blooming marketers out there, what would it be?
Katie: My first boss in my first marketing-related job said to me on my first day, “Honey, if you like being wrong you’re going to love it here.” What he meant was that in our line of business, direct response marketing, we were constantly testing things in a controlled environment to see which variables had the most positive impact on results, whether that be transactions, value of purchases, customer feedback, etc. He taught me that I could learn as much from the things that didn’t work as the things that did.
That’s still true. So my tip would be to stretch, to experiment, to use your imagination to do things your client hasn’t tried or customers haven’t seen. Some will work, some won’t. You’ll be ahead either way in the experience department.
OK, I have another tip, a related one: never take a job just for the money. I know that sounds pat, but by the time we get our second or third paycheck at a new salary level we’re accustomed to whatever type of living it allows. Other variables are at least as important. Will you be encouraged or allowed to learn new things? Is your supervisor someone you will enjoy and respect? Is it realistic to expect a decent quality of life? If you find something you love, s place you love, the money will come.
3. If you could pick one characteristic from each of the cities you’ve lived in, and mesh them together into one city – what would those characteristics be?
Katie:I’d love my family ties of St. Louis, the lakefront of Chicago and the vibrancy of New York. I want nothing from Dallas.
