So I visited this seminar on online marketing, mostly because there was a section on e-books and that caught my interest. Within two minutes, I disliked the guy who took the stage – just a gut feeling. But hey, I’m trying to stay non-judgmental here (spoiler: turns out my gut feeling was right).
Here are some of the highlights from the e-book part of that seminar:
- Anyone can write an e-book (true).
- It doesn’t cost you a dollar to publish it on Amazon (true, unless you want, you know, a professional cover or even minimal editing?).
- You shouldn’t spend more than a day writing it (?!), otherwise it’s just not worth the effort, but you ought to run a spellcheck (what?).
- It’s easy to hit an “Amazon Best Seller” (true, see the link at the end of this post).
- 91 percent of people don’t read past the first chapter of a book anyway (I don’t know where this number is coming from. It might be true. However, the conclusion drawn at the seminar was …), so don’t waste your time. You get their money either way.
Yeah. Needless to say I left the seminar early and feeling both discouraged and frustrated. And this isn’t the only shady practice in self-publishing. I know of groups where self-published authors get together to trade 5-star reviews (never mind if the book is actually any good) or of people who recruit all their friends to buy and rate the book on release day.
I understand the sentiment. It isn’t all that easy to gain traction for a self-published book, especially if you don’t know marketing and you’re on a tight budget. But what’s this doing to readers?
Because I’m a reader too. And as a reader I rely on reviews to help me pick a book I’m actually going to enjoy. If we cheat our readers on reviews, it means we take people’s money (and worse – their time!) because we care more about that than whether or not the book is actually a good fit for them. That’s unethical and self-centered.
By now I’m pretty well-trained in spotting the “friends’ reviews”. Especially when a newly self-published book with an unconvincing blurb has six 5-star reviews and they all include passages on how hard the author worked for this. 😉
Full disclosure: Naheli’s Sacrifice has been reviewed by both writers and readers, and I’ve specifically asked for reviews. However, the way I did it was to provide a free copy to people who weren’t emotionally invested in me and ask them to “leave an honest review”. That’s allowed by Amazon’s terms, and it ensures they won’t rate the book five stars just to avoid hurting my feelings. It is, in my view, an ethical way to gain reviews (which I do need) and stay honest to my readers.
Let me share a review I got on Naheli’s Sacrifice – partly because it makes me really happy, but also because it proves my point:
If you love deep, thoughtful fantasy along the lines of Connie Willis, Brandon Sanderson, and such, I think you will really like this book. If you prefer lighter urban fantasy with vampires, werewolves, etc., be prepared for a different type of read. I found the quality of this book especially amazing for a free book. Most free fantasy books on Amazon are pure dreck.
The last sentence is what makes me a little sad. Because how are readers going to find the gems among the dreck if they can’t rely on reviews?
Last but not least, here’s the link I promised: how anyone can turn an ebook into a #1 Amazon Sest Seller:
Thanks for your time reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts – and let’s stay ethical in marketing, okay?