Back Scratch the Easy Way - Author's Review Board

[meg_evonne]

Author's Review Board:

Do you think this is something that has merit?
Do you know the inner workings of the search engines on sites like amazon to give us insight?
Do you know how I can track honest participation of members, i.e. they get their 30 reviews from others and ignore backscratching the other authors?


I'm being told that how many reviews posted on Amazon (I know, the vile Amazon) and the timing of those reviews with release dates for large presses, small presses, and Indies is crucial. There's this hidden formula that will move you up on the Amazon search if you do it right. I've been told 30 reviews (doesn't matter if they are good or bad, just that they are there.) At Writer's Police Academy, a writer told me that there is NOW also a TIME FRAME, perhaps 3 days of release. So if you review a book too early or too late, it doesn't get the same place impact.

As a sample, click into to the website called Lucky 13. These are YA authors from a major house who knew they would get little to no support in promoting their book. They banded together and were/are a huge promotional success now.

We are intelligent people, and it seems time to grab that particular (Amazon & other search engines) bull by the horns and castrate it, if not butcher it.

I'm suggesting a creation of an Author's Review Board website with a forum. Initially for free, but eventually a minimal membership fee like $5.00/year for service expenses if it grows.

In exchange for equal promotion, participating authors would agree:
1. Write 30 reviews/year of other author's work in exchange for 30 reviews on Goodreads, B&N, Amazon, etc w/twitter & Facebook & blog postings. That means one review goes out to several review services.  AND THEN promote via social media. Goodreads for example automatically posts to your twitter and Facebook.*  See footnote, not as daunting as this seems
2. In addition, promote 30 book trailers & 30 cover reveals & possibly promote a giveaway item for the author
3. Promise to stop in at 30 blog tours &/or Facebook Events, again not as time consuming as it seems**  see note below
4. We might be able to construct our own blog tours to simply generate 'talk' and 'clicks'?
5. These can't be bot type stuff. Maybe no more than a personal "Hi, my friend's book is coming out...etc."
 
I envision:

1. A break down by genre eventually, but initially you promise whatever pops up from fellow authors you will grab.
2. For easy reviewing and time management: A participating author would post the date range the reviews must appear, provide a media package plus the tagline/back cover blurb, etc, any review notes &/or considerations, provide access to manuscript via netgalley.com or similar means for fellow authors to access at no cost under a controlled environment. An email notification of 'this is when you post that review!' would be generated by the author with the book coming out.

I've got tons of author emails from writing conferences over the years that might be willing to participate.

AGAIN THE ISSUE IS ACCOUNTABILITY, otherwise this thing collapses like some rip-off pyramid scheme. THERE IS NO OBLIGATION TO A CERTAIN STAR REVIEW LEVEL. This is crucial for me, and it doesn't seem to matter if a book gets great reviews, mediocre, or horrible ones. On the other hand any author dropping in only 1 stars on Goodreads or just being an a**hole would probably be warned off for being a lazy SOB. There's always something good to say. In other words, honest reviews without nasty intent.

*As horrible as it sounds, I've been told by small presses that most paid reviewers only read about 50 pages, those at the beginning and then hit the 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, & 9/10 mark to conclusion. (This is why some books with great beginnings end up high on Amazon lists even though you read the book to completion and gag.) I find this disgusting, but we might as well use it to our advantage from a time management view point.

**These blog tours simply need avatars and a couple smiley comments and questions. (The most popular at the moment are Facebook Events that actually run several hours, so even clicking in is convenient.) You can pre-set your questions to copy and paste as long as you DO LOG IN to the event or blog-tour.

Finally, is this something you might be interested in doing?

[superpsycho]

There are a few groups that are doing something simular already. Membership is usually restricted and it's rare that you'll find one that is taking new members. What they do, is help each other writing reviews and spreading the word. I haven't heard of any that charge for membership, though I was told it can be hard to get people initially who are willing to follow through since often everyone has their own views on how to proceed, priorities and schedules.

However, the groups who have gotten it together are supposedly fairly successful at getting decent sales.

[The Deposed King]

I'm really not sure about this.  A paid thing?  And I know that it matters what your star rating is.  I don't think I could be convinced otherwise.  Also, hey I'm all for honest reviews.  And I would never tell someone to put up something they didn't believe in.

However books that fall under the 4 star rating simply aren't that good and the many times I've gone ahead and purchased them anyway they sucked.  Look around an you won't find best sellers out there that are 3.5 stars unless they though a traditional publishing house.  Now if its just a small sample size you have to look at each review and make sure.  But you get about ten and you can tell just from average star rating whether its worth your time to keep looking.

As for the 30 reviews that sounds about right as a needed number, you get less than that and readers are suspicious.  But four and five are key.  My opinion is if you liked it put up a review and if it sucked please don't.

I don't know anything about the 3 day weight rule.  I do know that when it comes to amazon ranking system that when my sales numbers are small a review counts for just as much as a sale for the purposes of amazon ranking.  So that fits.  But again not sure about the 3 day thing cause I haven't been starting new series lately.  Mostly its been follow on books in a series.  Which already has follow on readers waiting for the sequels.

As for accountability?  You'd want to do something like this.  My brother has pacificcrest.com a publishing website he created with his IT team.  You have to sign up for a membership with the site either as an author or a reader.  As an author you put up the manuscript you want and wait/encourage beta readers to apply, as a reader if you see a book you want to read you click the button apply to be a beta reader.  As an author you then get a beta reader request you can approve or deny.  As an author you can see how far someone has read your book also for readers there's a function to high light areas (words or sentences on the page) and say misspelling, continuity error, bad writing etc.  Can't do comments so far.  Then you as the author can look at all the highlighted areas.  And if 20 of your 30 readers are all complaining about the same thing you can take a look.

Anyway you can tell if they've participated or not both by what page is says they're at on your book as well as if they left any highlighted comment areas.  That's how you do accountability.  And if you only want to have people you approve reading your book, just have them email you their ID (if you don't recognize it on the site) and then go onto the site and approve them.

Then for accountability, either to your email or in the comments section of the publishing website you have them post a link to the review they just made on your amazon account.  Anyone who does read your book, doesn't comment on errors and doesn't link back with an amazon review would be disqualified from future beta reading and from your mutual support group.

Now you don't have to use my brother's site, you can just make your own or pass stuff back and forth through emails.  I personally haven't had any issues with beta readers trying 'steal' anything I've written and I've been doing this for a few years but for those of us who are worried, I suppose if you're starting a new series and aren't into sequels yet, pacificcrest.com is password protected.  So do something like that.

So I don't believe the any star rating is good just pump the reviews out there, I'd call that a lie, unless and until I'm convinced otherwise.  Common sense as well as my own experiences say otherwise.

30 reviews as a minimum number needed for your book to gain critical mass sounds about right as well.

The 3 day limit for major impact of review...  I honestly can't say if that's a true thing or not.  What I can say is that reviews are critical and not only do they tend to count as the same weight as a sale but people will also look at your reviews to guide them for its worht their time.

A paid thing I'm not sure if I'd want to be a part of.

As for the blog and tour stuff, now that's something I don't really know anything about.

To be honest I've kind of already arrived as an Indie author, however my brother is still struggling to break out/break in whatever, still in the single digits for his daily sales.  And he's always trying different stuff like this or at least giving it a good hard look.  That's why he made his totally free indie publishing site, to try and capture authors and beta readers.  Right now we're using it as a tool mainly for proof reading and editing but...  Anyway  I might pass him a link to this post over to him and see what he thinks.

I'm not sure how much of this stuff is critical but I know some of it is, especially for the struggling new author trying to get a reader base.  When you start out you need those looks and buys so that you can get going so you can get high enough up on the amazon search ranking.

Oh also a few bits of author wisdom that you didn't have included here.  The first 30 days of your book being out there are critical.  For the first month your book is out you are automatically on amazon's new release list.  This is why so many authors who are getting good sales their first month start complaining about how things dropped like a rock later on.  Cause on the new release list you're just competing with other new releases.  Then when you age off you're suddenly off that one.

Ummm when I was first starting out I had to include the title of my book in my keywords, or else an amazon search for my book's name wouldn't find it.  But after my books had been out there for a while I was able to take it off my keyword list and it would still be found, thus I could add another keyword.

Also Author Central:  http://authorcentral.amazon.com/    This is the site you need to go on in order to link all your books together and build your author page.  You go to this site and in a few days it propogates over to amazon.com and then when your readers click on your author name they go here and they can start discussions and such.

Oh!  Yeah the new Kindle Unlimited Program.  The KU/KOLL sales.  If someone buys a 10 dollar membership they read all the amazon exclusive books out there for free.  They can have up to 10  or is it 12? titles in their account and read as many books as they want.  Just deleting an older title off their account and reading the next new one by switching in the new one.  If they read more than 10% of your book you get a KOLL sale.  Which for last month was 1.54 per lend/read/KOLL whatever you call it.  Now compared to my straight up sales I've been getting between 1/4th and 1/3th the same amount of KU/KOLL sales and the person always has the option of buying the book also later on.

So for a $2.99 book I get to me about 2 bucks and for a KOLL I get 1.5 bucks with the option they'll pay me again.  I'm all for it.  Price may go up and down but as a tool to get readers who are on the fence to read your book without paying anything more than their monthly fee, I think its a wonderful way to get more readers.

Finally this board here has been pretty dead for a while.  But if you want to totally immerse yourself with other authors and hear what they're up to.  http://www.kboards.com and go to the author section.  There are lots of discussions about amazon versus everything else.  I really recommend it if you're looking to start something like what your thinking about here.

Finally a shameless plug for my brother.  In addition to writing his own books and setting up the publishing site, he has a team of artists.  If you have an art need he could probably help.



The Deposed King

[meg_evonne]

Thank you both for chiming in, especially your thorough, as I knew it would be, thoughts on the idea.

I'll look into the the star rating vs. the promotion on Amazon. So far, I suspect that star ratings would effect who might purchase the book, but the review itself counts toward your 30 reviews. I don't like the concept of assuming any particular rating, and feel strongly that it should be free of obligation. What I wanted to assure myself, if I decide to set something up like this, then I need to KNOW THEY DID READ AND REVIEW THE BOOK. In other words, if an author takes the time to review for someone, there must be a review and promotion etc. back.

My intent would NOT BE TO CHARGE a fee, however I fear that if my time is consumed confirming the participation of members--then I'd expect at least a minimum return. I've assumed that any pay option would ONLY COME INTO play if the promises made were to fail...

I've already received a great deal of interest from authors. Most of them have access to Netgalley.com where the house can authorize access to the manuscript for review purposes. I will check out the other links you provided and get the take on others.

The closed concept that Superpsycho mentions is exactly what I'm hoping to obtain. I don't think that thirty people would become overwhelming to monitor. It looks like I've got at least six or seven in hands already and that is everyone that I've reached out to so far. So I think I will be proceeding.

I'm taking a class on Goodreads, but as far as I know there isn't any automatic transfer of the review to Amazon.

Thank you both so much for your thoughts and ideas!

Meg 

[superpsycho]

What I've suggested to the members on my site, as far as initial reviews, is to make sure all the members of their writing group, friends, family members and anyone else they know is informed as to exactly when a new book is going to be released on Amazon, then make the first day free so they can all be verified purchasers when they do reviews --if they are willing. It's easier to get people to do you a favor if it doesn't cost them anything. Tell them to be nice but honest in their reviews. The people that buy the book will see what's right or wrong themselves but if the initial reviews are honest, yet puts any problems in a fair light, then most of the readers that follow will likely maintain the same tone. 

[The Deposed King]

Meg I wish you every success and am looking forward to hearing how it goes.  I hope I didn't come across negatively.  Its going to be interesting to see the results.

Best of luck,



The Deposed King

[meg_evonne]

Not at all, DK. And what a great idea on the first day free concept, Super.

Here's an interesting article:http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidvinjamuri/2014/03/04/the-strongest-brand-in-publishing-is/

And read the comments in this one:http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1897949.html?thread=28891101#t28891613

It's a delicate balance. . .

[superpsycho]

Not at all, DK. And what a great idea on the first day free concept, Super.

Here's an interesting article:http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidvinjamuri/2014/03/04/the-strongest-brand-in-publishing-is/

And read the comments in this one:http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1897949.html?thread=28891101#t28891613

It's a delicate balance. . .

If you're self publishing the first day as free can really help if you've done the prep work to get people ready for it and notify them as soon as it's available. Letting people know it will be free ahead of time on forums, blogs, etc. and offering to email them if they are interested also can help greatly. Email addresses of interested people can build a mailing list of potential customers for each release which could generate big initial surge upon release, looks good to the booksellers. Things like that give them a reason to help promote a books sales if they think they'll get a return on their investment, which is the whole point.

Of course, if you have a traditional publisher, they'll have their own ideas on book promotions. A couple of our group's publisher did pre-sales for months before the book was actually released and had events setup for the authors just prior and after the release. It had them busy for some time.