SCAM ALERT! I was approached by a 5-star review exchange group on Facebook…

This morning, I had a message in my inbox on facebook. The content follows:

Hi Thomas,

I was wondering if you would be interested in exchanging five star reviews on Amazon? I leave stellar reviews and I also belong to a close knit group of about 25 individuals on FB who you can also exchange reviews with you. We are all about fast no BS exchanges. Some of the guys will even let you craft your own review and simply paste it for you. There is nothing better than receiving e-mails from people who REALLY read my work telling me how much they enjoyed my writing. With that being said, this is a business. How else can you explain author‘s who write plots like a kindergartner becoming best selling authors? As authors we have to stick together in our promotional efforts so that our work can become more visible to the public. If you are interested let me know. If not, I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND and there will be no hard feelings.

Best Regards,

Ben

The motherless sludge sucker that sent the message goes by Author Ben Harris, Jr. 

I almost told him to go off in a corner and violate himself, but under the advice of the gracious Lucy Pireel, I politely turned him down and went on my merry way. Be on the lookout – they’re everywhere….

Blogging newcomer Leigha L Craig, with a witty – and superb – review of “The Battle for Princess Madeline” by my pal, Kirstin Pulioff…

Click on the cover to read it…

 

Reviews: Love’m or hate’m, you gotta love’m…

Ask yourself a bare bones question. Do it when you’re alone, and have some time to think about the answer. When it’s quiet, the kids are in bed, the work day is done, and you have a glass of wine or a beer, and you are curled up in your favorite chair. Then ask:

Am I a good writer?

What’s the answer? Are you? Are you good, great, mediocre – or do you know? Don’t be surprised by that last option, for many don’t.

That’s why reviews are invaluable, both to gauging our talent, and our potential. 

Now, everyone dreads a bad review. It not only chips away at our ego (If you don’t have a bit of an ego, you don’t need to be writing in the first place), but also decreases, just by a smidgen, the possibility of our book’s financial and popular success. One won’t make much difference, of course, but what about two? Three? Ten? Can anyone honestly say that being smacked by a dozen bad reviews doesn’t cause them to throw down the pen permanently?

Conversely, of course, the stellar review does the opposite. The day your book gets sparkling reviews is the day you pop the cork on the bubbly and say bye-bye to the serious for a little while. 

But, before you consider either literary suicide or a party of Super Bowl proportions, you should consider something. 

Reviews come in flavors.

Strawberry:  

This is the one you get from friends and family when your book launches. It wouldn’t matter if you wrote “and” every other word and splattered adverbs from here to breakfast time, your book is a new dawn in literary history. 

Lemon:            

There are folks out there that wouldn’t give a book a good review if you held a gun to their head. They exist, nay thrive, to splatter the guts of every writer that blunders into their spotlight. Their review may be hurtful, it may be rude, but it ain’t gonna be nice.

Banana:

The honest-to-God, genuine, homogenized, pasteurized, authentic, ahem, review. No matter whether the reader liked the book or not, they tell you. They tell you what was right, what was wrong, and whether or not they’ll ever EVER read your stuff again. This is the dangerous one, far more so than either of the others. “Cause reading, and taste, is subjective. Whether the reader liked it or not, it’s based on their expectations, their reading level, their life experience, and whether your book, on that day, at that moment, moved them.

So. What do you do with each of the flavors?

Strawberry: Ignore them, in regards to any value. Thank Uncle Jeb or Cousin Luke, and then ignore them. They’re great for publicity, and totally useless otherwise. 

Lemon: Ignore them too. Trust in the intelligence of other readers who might come across them, and realize that most will recognize it for the hate-based, ignorant bit of garbage that it is. 

Banana: These are the ones you use, and are incredibly valuable. See, if you really really want to get better at your craft, you listen to opinion. Now, no one review is going to impress any author into thinking that they need to work on one aspect of their writing or another – but patterns will. So, take all your bad reviews and make notes pertaining to their main objection for your book. Make a list of those objections, and examine it for patterns. A pattern is generally considered to be something that occurs three or more times. So, look for three’s. If you have one, go back and read – and reread – whatever the comments were. 

Now, do the same thing with all the good comments. There can be patterns there, too. No one can exist in a world of the completely negative, so make a list of all the good stuff people are saying. Are there patterns there, as well? Good! That means you are doing something right, and you need to hang onto that, use it, revel it, and let it bolster you through all the hard work.

Now, it’s time to let go of your ego. It doesn’t matter what the negative comments were, if you have three or more folks saying the same thing, fix it, whatever it is. Study it, read blogs and articles on it, fix it. And the next thing you write, pay particular attention to that aspect of your writing. 

And while you’re at it, thank God for those bad reviews. They just brought you one step closer to being a best-selling author.

“Nuf said.

My pal Shannon McRoberts has author Tina Frisco as her guest, with a compelling article on Fear, Love, and Gratitude…:)

Click on Shannon’s logo to read 

Hey Y’all! “Vampcon”, the vamp thriller by my pal Armand Inezian, is on special sale this week on Amazon…check it out!

Click on the image to get it on Amazon!

Book Description:

“Kill the stoker and the shifter and the priest!”

The vampire who turned Jonathan Stoker did so as a joke: what fun to turn a man named ‘Stoker’!

But life is no joke for Jonathan. He’s fled his family, every vampire he meets attacks him, and he’s consumed by blood urges. Ten years after his mortal life ended, the blind and striking Ariel Lockhart delivers Jonathan’s invitation to the Vampire Congregation in Boston. It isn’t a request; Ariel’s summoning spell warps time and space to ensure every vampire attends.

Of all the many horrors Jonathan discovers at this murderous congregation, worst of all is to find his mortal son, Jake, has come searching for him. And Jake’s just fallen in love… with a 350-year-old vampire!

“Kill the stoker and the shifter and the priest!”

Hey Y’all! My pal Shannon McRoberts is going to be featured tonight at 7 p.m. on ArtistFirst Radio…check it out!

Click on the image to go to ArtistFirst!

Okay. I’ve had about enough of hearing about this “Indie Author” crap…

First of all, let me state a disclaimer to my headline above. What I’m about to say has absolutely NOTHING to do with any of the friends and acquaintances I’ve made on my blog, Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter. The writers, reviewers, and bloggers I’ve come upon are jovial, gracious, and forthright to a man – or woman.

However. I’ve become increasingly aware of a stigma out there on the web. One that’s attached to me – or any other traditionally published writer. That awareness has been growing, and today, when I read one final article about the Amazon review removal debacle, I’d finally had enough.

To anyone who thinks I have the same privileges and standing as Stephen King or Dean Koontz, forget it! See, about every post I’ve read on the review subject has been headed by the words “Indie author” in some fashion – as though the whole thing doesn’t affect every swingin’ writer out there. You kidding? 

Now, I’ll say this. As a writer that’s backed by a small (and yes, Greyhart is small) press, I do enjoy a few things. Okay. I get a few books to hand out to friends. I get some extra muscle in regards to marketing and so on. But let me tell you something. I (and I can speak for my fellow writers at Greyhart too) have been working my big bulbous butt off to get a foothold for my book. Mr. King can afford to lose 50 reviews – hell, he can loose 500 and not worry about it. Me? Hell no!

See, it’s like this. Despite whatever advantages (either read or perceived) traditional authors enjoy, success – at least from a monetary standpoint – comes down to one thing. Selling books. And good, honest, subjective reviews are an integral part of that success. Removing any of them detracts from potential sales – period. 

So, let’s do this. Let’s forget about all the monikers, shall we. We’re writers, pure and simple. And anything Amazon – or any other big book seller – does affects us all, including the removal of reviews. Whatever is wrong up in the magic kingdom of Amazonia needs to be addressed – by all writers. 

‘Nuf said.

Many thanks to my pal Yelle Hughes for pointing out this excellent article on Forbes about the Amazon review debacle…check it out!

Click on the logo to read it

Good morning, all! My “Chatting with the Authors” interview today is with T.W. Dittmer, author of “The Valley Walker”, a mystical adventure…:)

Click on the cover to get the book at Amazon!

TR: Good morning, Tim…thanks for dropping by.

TW: Good morning, Thomas. Thanks so much for offering to interview me. I appreciate your blog and am happy to be part of it.

TR: So, let’s get this rolling. How old were you when you wrote your first piece?

TW: I was seventeen, a senior in high school that knew everything there was to know about nothing.

TR: What was it, and in what genre?

TW: Actually it was music, a folk-rock piece titled My Fortress.

TR: What made you write it?

TW: My family was very musical, and some of it must have rubbed off on me. I think I was inspired by songwriters of the time, and poets that I studied in school. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan impressed me so much that I imitated him.

TR: What have you written since then?

TW: I majored in music after I got out of the army, and wrote songs for years. The music career never panned out, and I quit writing altogether for decades. For some strange reason I started writing again, began working on a novel. It took about four years to finish, but The Valley Walker was published in April of this year.

TR: What was the inspiration for your current book?

TW: Life in general is an inspiration, I think. Places I’ve been and things I’ve seen, people I’ve met and worked with, books and movies and music. It all works together.

TR: Tell us a little about it, and where it’s available.

TW: Well, The Valley Walker is a mystical tale about a Vietnam veteran’s quest for redemption and justice. That story line is interlaced with the efforts of a special task force to stop the sale of heroin to American college students. It’s available right now as an EBook for the Kindle at Amazon.

TR: Is there a particular place or setting where you get your writing ideas?

TW: Not really. The raw kernel of an idea can come from just about anything. It just comes, and I jot it down. I dig into it, doing some research and chewing on it and thinking about how it could work in a story. Then comes the fun part, just running with it.

TR: What made you choose either traditional or independent publishing?

TW: I don’t know if anyone ever read the query letters I sent out, but nobody asked to read the book… or even part of it. I was pretty much dead in the water when a few people started doing well at self-publishing and it made the news. I heard about it, looked into how it was done, and decided to give it a try.

TR: If you had to choose the most important element in an author’s platform, what would it be?

TW: To me, it’s a good story and good writing that gains you readers, and the best place to showcase that is in a blog. But please don’t make any major decisions based on that statement. I’m such a noob at this that I’m still trying to figure out where the bathrooms are.

TR: What mistakes have you made in regards to publishing and marketing your work, and what will you do differently in the future?

TW: I don’t know that I would classify anything I’ve done as a mistake, or even a missed step. I’m still learning, bumping into things and knocking them over, but I’m meeting a lot of great people and having a pretty good time doing it. I do think that it’s a good idea for an author wanting to enter the literary world to learn as much as they can about the craft and the business before they jump in.

TR: Do you have an idea for your next book?

TW: I’ve just about completed the first draft on the next one, but have stepped back to learn as much as I can about the writing craft before I continue.

TR: Thank you, Tim. And there you have it folks. If you would like to follow Tim’s blog, you can find it here:

http://twdittmer.wordpress.com/

Drop by tomorrow, when I interview Patsy Collins with her new book, “Escape to the Country“!

My buddy Armand Inezian with an excellent article on how to keep the “demons of doubt” from your door…

“One Book” – Another Tip For Retaining Creative Sanity.