Discouragement Brain--Cheating Authors Prosper on Amazon and This Is How

I have this thing called discouragement brain. 

Musicians, actors, artists, writers, dancers--we're all hypercritical of ourselves. We have to be. Art is a process, not a blast from some supernatural agency waving inspiration over our heads and daring us to catch it. We all edit. And while I edit words, musicians edit notes; dancers, nuance; actors, delivery;  and artists, technique. We have to. In order to create that perfect expression, we must refine until it feels as natural as breathing. 

Discouragement brain happens to everyone in the arts. 

This week has been tough. I've been writing a lot this year. A lot. My current yearly first draft word count exceeded 700,000 words last week. You're reading that correctly. Six full-length novels since January 1. I spend a portion of every day writing, a portion editing, and a portion doing all that other stuff authors have to do. I usually work around sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Beginning Labor Day weekend, I *might* take Saturdays off--I don't give up college football for anybody. I also edit for a few clients--very picky about who I accept, honestly--and now I'm blogging and writing a sports column too. All that falls into the "other stuff" category.

But I am also self-publishing eight books in eight months, and that's feeding my discouragement brain.

All of this work takes a toll on a writer. Self-publishing is hard and expensive if you're going to do it right, and while it would have been easy to slap a cover on an old manuscript and put it out there that was never an option for me. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right. Each book costs me hundreds of dollars to publish, but at least I know it's a product I can be proud of. 

 And yet--

Doing any part of all this requires confidence, and when discouragement brain rears its ugly head it's hard to justify moving forward. And this week has been that way for me. This week I find myself questioning my own career path. 

Let me explain.

With writing and publishing there is a right way and a wrong way to go about doing things. Right now, there's a growing percentage of self-published authors who are most assuredly making things difficult for everyone else. Aside from the content farmers and the spammers, there's a cross-section of self-published authors who have figured out how to beat the system. High Amazon rankings translate to bigger sales--and a self-published author who does well in sales may be approached by Amazon's publishing wing. The authors who manage that get preferential product placement, advertising, and direct marketing from Amazon--along with editing, standard promotions, professional cover art, etc etc etc. 

Any author wants that. But there's a quirk in the system. You see, on Amazon you don't have to actually buy a product in order to rate and review it. So authors have their friends go in and write tons of positive reviews with five star ratings. The book creeps up the rankings, which in the Amazon sales algorithm (based on the star ratings of the product) gives the book better product placement. 

Which leads to more sales. 

Which leads to more reviews and ratings.

Which leads to more sales. 

It's fascinating, in a sick sort of way, to find a self-published "Amazon bestseller" where all the reviews WITHOUT a verified purchase are glowing, and all the reviews WITH a verified purchase are critical. Even more interesting to me is the fact that after a critical review from a verified purchaser, there's a flurry of glowing reviews from unverified ones. 

Have to counteract that two-star with enough five-stars to keep that book's overall rating up, after all. 

And while the authors who cheat are rewarded, the authors who are doing everything the right way are penalized by a sales algorithm that was created for one purpose. Not to put great books in the hands of readers, but to increase sales for Amazon. They don't give two shakes of a pig's tail if the reviews are given by people who--you know, actually READ the book. All they care about is the obvious--books with high ratings and tons of reviews are easier to sell to more people who see all those huge ratings and erroneously assume the book is GOOD. 

In the meantime, authors who did things the right way, who paid for editing, cover art, formatting, interior design, copyediting, etc. stagger along in the cheaters' wake and wonder what they're doing wrong. 

You know--my writing isn't for everyone. I write genre, I write lots of gory battles, I don't write explicit sex scenes. And I don't self-publish all my work either. My new work goes to my literary agent, who submits them to publishers that are closed to unrepresented authors. I have a backlist of books that were small-press published, and that's what I self-publish. 

But I don't cheat. I don't ask all my friends and social media followers to run off to Amazon and rate/review my book. I don't manipulate the system. 

Hence, discouragement brain. 

Maybe I've been going about this the wrong way. Maybe I should manipulate the system too! Maybe I should get all my friends and acquaintances to run right over to Amazon and rate and review my books. You don't have to buy or read them. Who cares about reading them anyway? Just review them. And then maybe, just maybe, people who actually would enjoy reading my work will actually see my books and maybe, just maybe, they'll buy them.

Sure. Sounds kind of shabby when you put it that way, doesn't it? 

Food for thought. Unfortunately, discouragement brain binge-eats food for thought, and lately even looking at this situation has made my discouragement brain into a glutton. 

Why Reviewing Books You Enjoy Is So Important

Being an author is difficult--at any level. Few writers--usually only the big names--are provided marketing by their publishers. Even writers who are signed by the Big Six publishers don't get marketing support. For the small press or self-published writer, any promotions have to be undertaken by the author. 

Some have the finances to buy a marketing company. But those don't always work. When I was at Musa, we hired a marketing firm for a big name author--a NYT Bestselling, Nebula award-winning, made famous by a blockbuster movie author. We invested thousands of dollars in marketing his book, which was a sequel to the book that had made him famous in the first place. 

Didn't pay off. It was like pouring that money down a black hole. And this was a reputable marketing company, one that had a portfolio of success stories longer than the list of books I've edited. 

So what drives book sales for a small-press or self-published author? Reviews. Not just the professional reviews of critics, but the customer reviews on Amazon and other retail sites. Some authors manipulate the reviews by creating sockpuppet accounts and getting friends to do the same. But most--like me--prefer to do things the right way. 

One of the right ways is to do what I did last month. I offered the first book of the series for free for a week upon release. I don't do things like that because I'm a kind person. I do that because I am hoping for reviews. Literally thousands of people downloaded my book for free--enough to catapult it into the top 25 for the genre. And out of those thousands of people, only two have so far left reviews. 

Two.

Not a great percentage. 

I posed this question on my Facebook page today, and a good friend of mine commented that he'd grown up when only professionals did book reviews, so he didn't feel qualified. And I thought for several hours on what he'd said. 

I'm an editor. I've left reviews on books many times. And I strive to make those reviews both unbiased and constructive, especially for self-published authors who may not be getting the kind of feedback they need. For example, my Amazon customer review on KM Shea's book Queen of Ice. This young writer has a lot of talent, but her book suffered with issues a strong editor would be able to correct. And so, that's what I told her--not to be a bitch, but to let her know what she needed to do to make her writing career even better. 

But I am an editor. This review is the kind of thing I'd normally include in an editorial letter to an author I am working with--an email that has attached a red-inked document with hundreds of comments and corrections. 

So maybe...just maybe, Ed has a valid point. Maybe, to many readers, writing a review is intimidating. 

See--here's the thing. Not every review needs to be an editorial critique of an author's work. Amazon gives you options--and even if you just RATE a book on their one-to-five star scale, that helps. Because the more ratings a book has, then the higher it's going to show up on the "Avg Customer Review" filter on the sales page, and that's HUGE. For example, today's Fantasy sales page based upon Average Customer Review. Obviously, the more 5 star ratings a book gets, the higher it's going to be on the page. And while the top of the page is predictably JK Rowling, Tolkien, and Diana Gabaldon, look at the bottom of the page. 221 reviews. 191. 106...

These authors are showing up on the same sales page as Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Outlander. 

That's where ANY writer wants to be--needs to be in order to generate sales. Look at the second page. By page ten, the bottom book has 18 reviews--all 5 stars. 

Not many customers are going to cruise past page ten. 

Take a look now at the reviews for that last book on page ten. The top review reads as follows

Excellent story with twists and turns you don't see coming. It is hard to put the book down, because you want to see what is going to happen next and how the story ends! Looking forward to buying a hard copy and will be reading this one again!

Here's my point--you don't have to write a huge review, although there's a lot of benefits another reader can get from your extensive and detailed review. You can write a THREE SENTENCE review like this reader did, explaining what you liked about the story and give that author as much benefit as one of my 2000 word critiques. 

And if you really love a book, then help that author out by posting your feelings as a review. You have no idea how much your review is needed by the author, and how many other people will read your words and think, "Hey, maybe I should try this out." 

So review the books you read--on Amazon, or Goodreads, or wherever. Because when you do, somewhere, an author gets her wings. 

You know what I mean.

New Cover Art ; New Book-=-The Asphodel Cycle 2: The Redemption of Asphodel

Cover art makes me happy. Well done covers help your readers to visualize the characters in your story. I've been fortunate. Over the past six years or so, I've worked exclusively with cover artist and web diva Kelly Shorten, over at KMD Designs. She was one of my partners at Musa Publishing and is responsible for all those gorgeous Penumbra covers. Now she's an independent designer, and I am SO glad to be working with her again. You've already seen the gorgeous art for The Reckoning of Asphodel--now check out the even MORE gorgeous art for The Redemption of Asphodel!

Okay, let's be for real here. 

It's freaking amazing, right? 

You may be wanting to know more about this book, so here's the blurb: 

The battle of Asphodel and its aftermath has taken a toll upon Tamsen Ka’antira de Asphodel. Her Elven husband, Brial, is overprotective—and very aware that their greatest friend, Anner, is still in love with his wife. Still dangerously weak, Tamsen must help determine which noble is best suited to sit upon Ansienne’s alabaster throne—whether Brial likes it or not.

Unfortunately, the Duke de Spesialle isn’t done with Tamsen yet. The dream that once tortured her keeps changing, and despite Brial’s precautions, she must confront Spesialle again. But the Virgin Huntress has plans for Tamsen, and sends her on a journey to answer just one question: “What gift can buy the redemption of the Elves?”

But when Tamsen finally confronts the answer to the goddess’s question, she may discover that the one thing she must sacrifice to save her people is the one thing she is not strong enough to give.

The Asphodel Cycle 2: The Redemption of Asphodel will be released on June 6!

All that being said, next Tuesday, May 3, is the release of the first Asphodel novel The Reckoning of Asphodel. Stay tuned for buy links and--

Wait a second. I neglected to mention that for the first WEEK, The Reckoning of Asphodel will be offered for free. As in totally free. So take advantage of it--and if you do, a review on Amazon or Smashwords or wherever you purchase your copy would be greatly appreciated. 

Let me know what you think about my cover art or anything else Asphodel--I look forward to hearing from you!

Major Reviewers, Third Party Sites, and the Continuing Prejudice Against E-Publishing

Not too long ago, my trusty Google alerts informed me that a blogger had mentioned my name in a post.  That had happened before--an old nemesis from my past had bemoaned the fact that mean people like me could get published while nice people like her couldn't.  Needless to say, I was steeling myself as the site came up.

What I found was totally unexpected.  The An American Editor blog had mentioned me very kindly as a good new author he'd found on Fictionwise.  I was pretty chuffed by the mention--after all, it's not very often you get an unexpected mention like that.  So a few weeks later, I was completely floored when the same blogger posted "LE Modesitt Jr and Celina Summers: Fantasy in Contrast."  In this post, American Editor compared my Asphodel Cycle  to Modesitt's Saga of Recluse series, giving Asphodel a great review in the process. 

At the time, I considered sending him a box of chocolates. After all, writers published through small presses rarely get unlooked for reviews and especially not from a professional in the business. So I sent the review to my editors and did a little happy dance and that small promotional part of me wondered, "Gee, can I use this review? It would be really cool if that review showed up at Ficitonwise or Amazon--maybe it would help sales..."

And, lo and behold, while I was dithering the review did show up at Fictionwise, posted by An American Editor.  Quite interestingly after that, I got a spike in sales for The Asphodel Cycle at Fictionwise which I assumed (and still do) was a direct result of that review.

So yesterday, my Google alerts rang up again, and once again An American Editor mentioned my name. The blog post was entitled Finding the Needle in a Haystack of Needles: Reader Reviews.  Throughout the post, the editor examined the difficulties of finding a good ebook to purchase and explored one of the reasons why--the lack of credible reviews for e-published works. I really recommend that you read the post. Aside from being fascinating, it's also very direct. 

One of the biggest problems I have as an ebook reader and buyer is finding that proverbial needle in a haystack of needles, that is, the ebook worth buying and reading that is written by an independent author. The ease of publishing an ebook has created a flood of ebooks to choose among, and making that choice is increasingly difficult.

That one paragraph encapsulates the major problem facing e-book authors today.  How do we find a readership?  In some category genres, like erotica or romantica, the key is prolific releases.  The erotic aauthor who releases a book every month or so, who begins with outstanding reviews from big romance sites, is going to build and maintain a readership.  These books are usually novellas, usually serial, and usually keep the writer in a specific niche.  I edit several authors who are able to accomplish this and my hat is off to them.

Although romance is a strong thread in my work, however, I am primarily a speculative fiction writer.  Asphodel, Covenants, and  Mythos  are all fantasy series and while Mythos  is being released as serial novellas, the subject matter (Greco-Roman mythology) lends itself to that format.  My other books are novels and big, fat novels at that. It's difficult, if not impossible in my opinion, to build a strong, cohesive readership in purely speculative fiction e-books.  My books get reviewed, yes--and usually get strong reviews--Novelspot, Love Romances and More, Coffee Time Romance, Night Owl, Two Lips Reviews and scads more have given my books four and five stars repeatedly. 

I'm not saying this to brag--I'm telling you this as an illustration.  The normal review sites for my genre do not review e-books. 

When The Reckoning of Asphodel  was reviewed by In the Library, I had to print out the book--five hundred plus pages of paper--and ship it to the reviewer.  (That's why they never reviewed past the first book; it was too darn expensive) So the reviews I get are read by people who primarily prefer another genre entirely--romance.  Not fantasy readers; romance readers.While there's enough romance in my stories to satisfy a fan of romance, it's secondary to the primary plot. And that, I think, is the huge problem for fantasy and sci fi authors published through electronic means.

We don't have many avenues to receive reviews that are credible to our target audience.
 
Reader reviews on third party sites are either just starred reviews--where you click on a star level from one to five to indicate your enjoyment of the book--or generally stilted one line comments.  Occasionally, you get a good review from a reader, but that doesn't help you to combat the hordes of re-releases choking the top of the best seller lists on Amazon or Fictionwise. I don't delude myself into thinking I can compete with Mercedes Lackey's entire backlist when it comes to sales for people's Kindle or I-pads. This is new in e-publishing.  Remember: The Reckoning of Asphodel was nbumber one on Fictionwise in fantasy for two weeks after its release--knocking off Neil Gaiman's Stardust the same week the movie came out.  The major publishers were still trying to ignore e-publishers at that point. 
 
Subsequent Asphodel novels hit the bestseller list--The Gift of Redemption hit the top twenty; Temptation of Asphodel the top twenty-five and Apostle of Asphodel only the top fifty.  I think the decrease is pretty representative of how the public view of e-published books changed over the course of those three years. 
 
So how do we combat that?  How can e-published spec fic authors break through the veil of condescenscion that masks us from our target audience, the disdain of major review sites, the immense backlog of reissues at third party distributors, the obscurity our lack of name recognition consigns us to?  Well, notices like the one An American Editor gave me certainly do help.  After his review appeared, the Asphodel books gained new readers--readers I was able to track as they progressed their way through the series.  As a matter of fact, The Reckoning of Asphodel  reappeared in the Fictionwise top 100 bestseller list in Fantasy for a time, followed by its sequels in approximately 3 week intervals.  So the word can get out there and it does have an effect.  An American Editor makes a few suggestions on their blog, geared toward reader reviews and how the third part distributors can change the way those reviews are given--offering rewards for more extensive responses to pre-prepared questionnaires about the book. 
 
I have a different idea.
 
Let's take all those reissues OFF the regular genre pages.  Let new literature live or die against recent releases, not against JRR Tolkien's legacy released all at once in a new format.  Give us six months to maneuver among other books of the same age, giving us true bestseller status and visibility.  How hard would that be?  I wouldn't think it was that difficult at all. That way, new authors can get noticed and readers searching for new voices don't have to click past fifty pages of fifty years of genre writing.  That's one way.
 
Another way, perhaps, would be easier if the major reviewers would implement e-publishing regulations.  When will the NYT review an e-wpublished book?  Heck, for that matter when will they review a book released by a small independent publisher?  How about Romantic Times? The big sci fi and fantasy reviewers?  There is a LOT of great literature out there, released by e-publishers who are willing to take a chance on literature that the major houses passed by.  Why ignore it?
 
When I was at the RT convention, I asked the agents' panel if e-published books were now considered a legitimate publishing credit.  To a person, they admitted that whereas three years ago e-books weren't, now they can be, depending upon the house that published them.  E-publishers like Ellora's Cave and Samhain (and now Aspen Mountain Press, whose reputation for good editing and strong stories) are moving beyond the one-time prejudice against electronic publishing.  That's good news.
 
That good news needs to seep into the minds of review sites, of NY publishing houses and the third party distributors who abandoned their early commitment to e-publishing in favor of mass reissues of authors' whole backlists from scanned versions of older editions.  At Aurora, I'm working with an author who is reissuing her backlist with us--one book at a time, each book re-edited and re-formatted to meet e-publishing standards and each book treated as a new release by the company.  She is a pleasure and a joy to work with, because she's committed to the idea of e-publishing as the format of the future and is bringing new manuscripts to the table in addition to her backlist. There is a difference between what she is doing and what the NY publishers, with the collusion of major third party ditributors, are doing to the e-publishing industry.  She's integrating into it; they are taking advantage of it.
 
But more importantly, what An American Editor is doing is a huge first step.  By their continued championship of e-published books and their quest to legitimize the jewels a reader can find hidden in the overwhelming mess of third party distributorship, they are calling attention to a new and growing problem e-published authors are facing.  And for that, I have to thank them.
 
And for the review too.  Heck, I'm not stupid.