Readers, your Opinion Means the World to Us: Write a Book Review!

"Beloved reader? You would be shocked how much regular people will pay attention to you." ~ Kristen Lamb


The following post is an excerpt taken from author Kristen's Lamb's blogpost: The Ugly Truth of Publishing & How BEST to Support Writers (December 2015).

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"Reviews", by Kristen Lamb

"I get that a lot of people buy used because they are on a budget. Been there so *fist bump*. You can still support writers in meaningful ways.

Even if you buy new, there is another way you can support writers you love. Write a REVIEW. A GOOD ONE.

As a writer I have a personal policy. If I can’t say something good, I shut up. Mainly because I AM far more picky about story being a writer and an editor but also this business is brutal. If we are not supporting each other? Who will? Because our families don’t get us. Our significant others might. Our kids think we are nuts. So I only leave glowing reviews. But that is me. Writers shouldn’t eat their young.

For READERS. Reviews are more important now than ever before, especially for the indie and self-published author. The reason is that with the change in the publishing paradigm, the slush pile (unfortunately) has been dumped into the reader’s lap. There are a lot of bad books out there. But even then, that really isn’t all that big of a problem.

Want to know the bigger problem?

There are a lot of good books out there.

With the Internet and social media and the explosion of books there is SO MUCH content. This means consumers are overwhelmed with choices. Reviews help writers sell books because if readers see a book with no reviews or five reviews versus a similar title with thirty reviews? Who will they choose? Additionally writers gain access to promotional tools like Bookbub, but can ONLY do this with a minimum number of reviews.

Instead of sending me an e-mail about how much my book changed your life? Put it on Amazon and change MINE! 

Readers are essential to our success beyond just the sale. If you love our books, your promotion means a thousand times more than any ad I could pay for. Ads and marketing don’t sell books. Never did and never will. Only thing that sells books is word of mouth.

Beloved reader? You would be shocked how much regular people will pay attention to you. That review is worth your weight in gold to me for a number of reasons. Humans don’t like being first. So unless a couple of you are brave and review? My book can sit with NO reviews and it is then unlikely to sell.
Think about a shelf with ONE item. It freaks us out. There is only ONE. Is it poison?

Secondly, when you review us, Amazon favors our books in the algorithms meaning more people SEE our book. More people SEE it, odds are I will sell more copies. In the on-line world YOU have the power to get US that awesome front of the store book placement. The more reviews the better the algorithm. Better algorithm, more views. More views, more sales, more sales —> we make a best-seller LIST!

You can also use your social media because it means more than ours.
Tweet a picture of our book. Put it on Facebook. People in your network ARE noticing. Peer review and approval is paramount in the digital age. And don’t support your favorite author on Goodreads as a first choice (AMAZON reviews are better).  ..."


***  Okay, I'm interrupting Kristen's post at this point to explain why placing your review on Amazon first is important, (personally I love Goodreads too!) but by the time readers are looking around Amazon, they pretty much have decided that they are ready to buy a book, it is a shopping site after all.

Even if certain shoppers don't want to support Amazon over their local bookstore, they often go there just for the reviews to see if a book is a good choice to spend their money on. 


Yes, I love Goodreads, but please, also stick up a review on Amazon!

You, dear reader, have the awesome power and opportunity to make our books a success!

It's up to you for the simple reason marketing doesn't work as Kristen Lamb points out, and also because people don't like us authors jabbering on about our books all the time as it is terribly annoying.  (It's like Aunt Betty pinching your cheeks like you were a baby and taking out all the family photos every time you come for a visit, right?)  Not to mention the fact that people expect authors to say nothing but good things about our own publications.  We soon get tuned out and ignored.

So, if books are only successful through word of mouth, reviews are our lifeblood.

It's readers like you who can give a second opinion and thereby encourage others to give a book a chance. 

Okay, back to Kristen's last words on the subject.... 


"Support us on your regular Facebook page or Instagram or Twitter. Because when you post a great new book you LOVED your regular friends see that."

~*~*~*~
 
Yes, and remember Amazon and Goodreads!  Thanks Kristen!

 Yes, we authors really appreciate all our reader's reviews.  Thank you for taking the time to write them.

Read Kristen Lamb's full blog post about the ugly, nitty gritty of the traditional publishing industry: click here.


And....

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If you like my blog, you may LOVE my books!

Click here and check them out!

Born Genius ~ A Conversation between Father and Son

(Post originally published February 2, 2012)

It is constantly stressed that writing can be learned, developed, mastered; that if you have a talent, it can be made to shine. However, there are writers who were destined for greatness from the beginning, whose star seemed to blaze the minute they appeared on earth similar to Mozart and his musical genius. In the case of writing, I am thinking of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist, scientist and statesman.

(Image: Goethe in the Roman Campagna, by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, 1787)

Naturally, we can recognise his great talent with famous works from his adult years such as Faust: Part One, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Egmont A Tragedy in Five Acts to name a few, but like Mozart, he had a unique gift that manifested at an early age. Goethe was passionate about history, languages and art, and I thought I would share a little known scribbling he wrote when about eight years old, the last colloquy from a set of three featuring a conversation with his father about the wax figurines he was shaping, imitating the great artists and their model-making:



“Father: What are you doing there, my son?

Son: Making wax figures.

Father: I thought so. Oh, when will you ever put nuts aside?”

('Nuts': Goethe was playing on a Latin pun with the word 'nuces', which means 'nuts' and 'childish play'.)

Son: Why, I'm not playing with nuts, I'm playing with wax.

Father: Ignoramus, can it be that you don't know the meaning of 'nuts' in this connection?

Son: Now I remember. But see how well I have learned in a short time to model wax.

Father: To spoil wax, you mean.

Son: I beg your pardon. Am I not creating rather clever things?

Father: Yes indeed. Show me some of your malformations.

Son: Among other animals I have made, with special success, a cat with a long moustache, and a city mouse and a field mouse to illustrate one of Horace's satires, (i.e., an ancient Roman satirist), translated by Drollinger into pure German doggerel.

Father: I like this reminiscence better than the beasts themselves. But have you made nothing else which shows your alleged art more advantageously?

Son: Yes, indeed, here is a whale, with mouth wide open as if to swallow us, and two chamois, which Emperor Maximilian was so found of hunting that he is said to have been unable to find his way out of the declivitous rocks till an angel in human form showed him the path.

Father: Why, you apply your scraps of history so aptly that one must pardon your misshapen figures. And is that all?

Son: By no means; for all my models the ones to be especially admired are: the crocodile shedding false tears, the monstrous war elephant of the ancients, the lizard, friend of man, the croaking frog announcing spring, all of which lack nothing but life.

Father: Nonsense! Who would be able to recognise them without the labels?

Son: Alas! Is not every man the best interpreter of his own works?

Father: This statement is quite true, but not apropos.

Son: Pardon my ignorance and deign to look at this sleighing party. There are just a dozen in it, all different, partly creeping and partly flying creatures, of which the swan, the stag, the walrus, and the dragon seem to be the most natural.

Father: You may think so, if you like, but it is perfectly apparent that you make no real distinction between beautiful and ugly.

Son: Dear father, will you be so kind as to teach me the difference?

Father: Certainly, but everything in season. Your power of observation must first be more mature.
Son: Oh fiddlesticks! Why will you postpone it? Tell me about it today rather than tomorrow and I will listen to you while I play.

Father: I have already said it cannot be done now—some other time. Put aside your childish nonsense now and go to your work.

Son: I will. Good bye.”

 ***

Amazing when you think an eight year old wrote this piece on aesthetics ~ Playdoh time rendered into a miniature work of art!

(Excerpt from “The Life Of Goethe: Albert Bielschowsky)

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Like my blog? You will LOVE my books!

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Who Do You Write Like?

(Post originally published November 5, 2011)

While searching the Internet one day, I came across a funny little widget that caught my attention:

“Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.”




Perhaps this is not such a good idea as writers are supposed to find their own voice, but out of curiosity, naturally, I had to see which illustrious master of the pen it would assign me.

I tried various pieces, first chapters of all my books, paragraphs from my blog posts and received the following results:

H.P. Lovecraft came up the most.

David Foster Wallace, was second.

Then James Joyce, Margaret Atwood, and Douglas Adams

Of course, I am not that gullible, trusting in an Internet widget! I wanted to see what would happen if I deliberately made up a few lines that sounded like those by a well known author. Dr. Seuss was in the widget's list of famous authors, so I plonked in the following made-up lines:

I will not eat them on a mat,
I will not eat them with a hat,
I will not eat them with a cat,
I will not eat them with a rat.

The result? Margaret Atwood!

Aha! As expected, widgets cannot think or really analyze anything, but to give it a fair chance, I inserted real lines from “Green Eggs and Ham”:

“Do you like green
eggs and ham?” “I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.
I do not like green
eggs and ham!”
"Would you like them
here or there?"
"I would not like them
here or there.
I would not like them
anywhere."
“I do so like green
eggs and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am!”

What did I get?

 Ernest Hemingway.  Seriously.

I decided to do one last experiment, and just let a whole line of a's run across in to paragraph, like this:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And, a whole paragraph of e's:

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

And lo and behold ~ I write like J.D. Salinger.

The moral of the story: don't trust an internet widget to understand your unique style of writing.

And, the inventors of the widget want me to sign up for their newsletter to teach me how to write better? That's kinda funny!

Here's the link if you wish to try your own experiments: I Write Like ... 

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Like my blog? You will LOVE my books!

Click here and check them out today!

The First Novel (Part 1)~Lessons I Have Learned Along the Way

(Post originally published June 4, 2011)

We accept writers love to write, others assert it's a compulsion, even when the dreaded curse of “Writer's Block” threatens to charge out of the murky recesses of the mind at times and seize control, until held at bay once more by the Knight of Inspiration with his sword—the mighty pen.

But changing genres? That is a daunting step to take. Until now, I have written non-fiction books and have felt quite comfortable in this familiar sphere, that is, until I completed Volume 2 on “Faust”, which literally wore me out. So much data to process! A break was needed to cool the over-heated mind and a novel was the perfect solution.  Here it is:

(Batalha Publishers, May 2011)

At first, writing a novel was easier said than done; the last fictional works I wrote, other than a short story in college, were my English compositions for high school. Was it possible for me to switch back after all this time? Why not? If I dared to analyse other authors, it was high time I wrote my first book. While working on Brushstrokes of a Gadfly I discovered many of the old clichés and quotes by famous authors about writing were true, or half true, and thought I would share them.

* “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ~ Stephen King

True. There are many doubts, or at least, niggling insecurities that try to hold you back, especially with a first novel. Stephen King no longer has to worry about building a fan base, but for a new novelist, staring at a blank page can be intimidating, even when you have a story just waiting to be put on paper, or the hard drive, whatever the case may be. Can I write an entire book people will find interesting to read? Develop believable characters? Construct a decent plot? Write scenes that have action and movement, even if the book is not a crime novel or a thriller? Set my story in a city I have never visited past the airport during flight changes and rely on research? You can only try, there comes a time you have to stop worrying what people might think, and concentrate on what is important for your story. If you try and please the readers first, or write just what you think will sell, the story will not ring true. Deep down people want something truthful, believable, perhaps just entertaining, or something that makes them observe life in a way they didn't before. They can tell if something is geared for their pocketbook rather than their sensibilities. Even if they don't like your book or agree with everything you have written, at least they may have read something new. Reading is supposed to broaden horizons, not narrow them.

* Your opening paragraph or scene must be a “Grabber” and hook your readers at the very beginning.

This I would say is half or two-thirds true. Yes, it is important to write a vivid introduction to draw the reader into your story, but it is only an introduction after all. In a few of the old classics, I've read some opening paragraphs or first chapters that seem pretty boring in my view, it's after those sections we really see the tale and characters unfold that in the end made these books classics. Today, some writers are so adamant on hooking the reader with searing barbs that it smacks of desperation. “Read me!” “Read me!” It's like being introduced to someone, and instead of a nice firm handshake, they grab your hand and crunch your knuckles while screaming their name, just to make sure you know who they are. Or, authors put so much information into their opening chapter with a bewildering amount of graphic description they can't continue the momentum and the action slows to a crawl until you reach some pivotal moments of the plot. That nearly turns me off a book! In answer to this, I tried to achieve a balance between introducing several of my key characters at an important event that I could carry through the rest of the novel, yet not do anything so shocking in the first opening paragraphs that I've completely assaulted my readers. I wanted my first novel to blossom into a majestic oak, not shoot up like a weed only to be stepped on.


* The characters tend to write themselves. They become like living, breathing people.

So true, it's scary. How can people you invent in your imagination become so lifelike? Because authors draw their characters from life around them. Perhaps not exact characters, authors also experiment in combining different character traits, but authors use what they observe, and before long, characters do feel like real people that you have known all your life. I used to be sceptical of this old cliché until it felt like all my characters wanted to run away and do their own thing, and I had to lasso them back into place when and where I needed them at times! It became so natural to find myself saying, “No, Steves wouldn't say that, he would do this instead,” when I really wanted him to say something, but it didn't suit him. Or “I know what Aunt Martha's going to say when she finds this out! She'll have Katherine and the family in knots...”, thus the characters helped write the story and fill the blanks, I didn't have too much to say in the matter. One character refused to go in the direction I had originally planned for him, he rebelled entirely. The story completely changed course because of it, I can't give details without ruining the book for you, but if I forced him to go the way I had envisioned, it literally wouldn't have worked, the story would have sounded “artificial” if it wasn't true to the way the character had eventually developed. It went beyond my control, which leads us to another observation ...

* Doris Lessing said in an interview that none of her books turned out the way she expected them to.

Well, it happened with this novel, but that is a topic for another blog post. To be continued!

Click HERE for Lessons, Part Two!

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Like my blog, you will LOVE my books!

Click here and check them out today!

Greetings! (This Blog is under construction.)

 "I'm an artist you know....it is my right to be odd." ~ Brushstrokes of a Gadfly


Thank you for visiting my new blog, however, as you can see, I have just moved in to E-Blogger, and therefore my house is a little empty at the moment!

Currently, I have a blog on Goodreads and will be moving all my old posts here.  Of course, I will write some new posts as soon the inspiration strikes me.


 You can visit my Goodread blog here:  Goodreads Author Blog

As the title suggests of the blog suggests, whatever curious and interesting subject strikes my fancy, be it silly or serious, will be posted for your reading pleasure. Plus, I also make announcements on occasion concerning my latest projects. 

So please, tune in, I promise to fill these empty pages.