Author: A.C. Flory

Yet Another Reason to Be an Indie

Who me? I would *never* do anything like that!
Who me? I would *never* do anything like that!

Do you secretly dream of being traditionally published?

When someone you know is offered a contract, do you experience a moment of intense envy? Do you smile, and say ‘congratulations’ while silently screaming ‘why not me’?

Don’t worry, your dirty little secret is safe because….yes, hand-on-heart, I too share your shame. Despite everything I have learned about the traditional publishing world in the last two years, I still haven’t completely quashed the romantic notions I used to hold about the Big Six. I guess it’s like the dream of finding Mr Right and living happily ever after, it never completely dies.

But to quote the Bard, “All that glitters is not gold…”

Every contract we sign, whether it be with Amazon, or one of the New York set, will contain a warranties and indemnities clause, and the language is remarkably similar. In effect, this clause absolves the ‘publisher’ from any blame or financial responsibility if the book breaks any laws. That is, if the poop hits the fan, the author is responsible for the clean-up. Continue reading “Yet Another Reason to Be an Indie”

Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part III

razor wireTo refresh everyone’s memory, in Part I, I spoke briefly about Paul Drakar’s idea that top ranked Amazon reviewers were the new Gatekeepers of publishing, and his strategy for enlisting their help to promote our books. In Part II, I investigated whether these top ranked reviewers really did influence sales – apparently they do. Now it’s time to look at Drakar’s strategy in detail.

In a nutshell, the strategy is a six-step process that involves a great deal of research, and more than a smidgeon of chutzpah. I’ve provided a bare-bones summary of the steps below, however I recommend reading Drakar’s entire article as it contains a great deal of useful information. Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part III”

Pitching to the New Gatekeepers – Part II

Prison GuardAt the end of Part I, I promised to talk about some results I’d found relating to the influence of reviews on sales. Well here it is, and it’s a beauty.

The research is titled Estimating the Helpfulness and Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics.

Put into layman’s terms, the researchers were looking for ways to reliably predict :

a) the types of reviews that would influence customers to buy,

b) and the types of reviews that would help merchants to sell.

I won’t pretend to understand the methodology, or the statistics, however I think it’s important to look at what the researchers were studying, and where. The ‘what’ included three categories of popular consumer goods : Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers – Part II”

Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part 1

gateNot that long ago, K.P. Ambroziak wrote a guest post for Indies Unlimited entitled, ‘A New Gatekeeper Rising’. That post triggered an interesting discussion about reviews and gatekeepers, however it was the author’s comments about review numbers that really caught my attention. Apparently, BookBub will not accept books for [paid] promotion unless they have a certain number of reviews – i.e. have a track record of popularity with readers.

As Indies, we all know the importance of getting a goodly number of reviews for our books; nothing looks so unloved, and unread, as a book with only a few reviews, or, -shock horror- no reviews at all. Like it or not, Amazon has conditioned us to see reviews as ad hoc indicators of popularity, and being herd animals, we associate popularity with quality.

Whether popularity really does work that way is a moot question, and not one I’m brave enough to tackle here. Nonetheless, I think we can all accept that, as a marketing strategy, popularity begets sales. After all, Amazon doesn’t publish all those best-seller lists for nothing. Each list is a bright, shiny life-raft for customers drowning in the sheer volume of ‘things’ on offer at Amazon.

For us Indies, getting onto one of those life-rafts is tantamount to being given the keys to marketing heaven.

The question then is, how do we squirm our way out of the sea, and onto a life-raft? Is BookBub right? Are reviews the answer? Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part 1”