41k - AI part 2

42k - AI part 2



The Deposed King

37k - AI part 2
An I put up a pretty long post on the other thread meg.  Don't know how much of an authority I am on the subject.  I just put in my 2 cents, which can and has changed over time!



The Deposed King

40k AI part 2



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

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The Deposed King