Bad Reviews - Do they really hurt your sales?

Yesterday I experienced my lowest review yet. 2 stars on Health and Safety.
At first, I felt kind of bad. I do tend to take things very personally. But, after reading the review, the reviewer had some very good points that I can use in both my future books and when I turn the novella into a full novel.

He found it hard to really get attached to the main character, Les. He wasn't overly impressed with the narrative, nor the development of how society came to be so stringent in its methods.

But what will potential buyers see? At the moment, there are only four reviews. Two five star, a four star and a two star. So far my sales haven't seemed to change for the worse. Perhaps they are just ignoring the poor review in light of the other better reviews.

I can only hope that more people review the book so I can get a better overall picture of how the majority of readers like it. Four reviews isn't a lot, especially since there have been well over a thousand downloads.

It would be nice if Amazon would allow a user to place a review through their kindle while reading or having completed their eBooks. It seems to me that once a user has finished a book, the last thing that they want to do is go back to the site to review it; unless they either loved it or hated it.

Please, do us indie authors a huge favor and review our books. We're competing against huge publishing companies that have giant marketing budgets for their books. We're competing against already well-established authors who have developed a following of loyal readers. It's not easy for an indie author to get their book out there and many times, even those of us with professionally edited works, our success is often left to luck.

I'm certain there are many great indie authors out there whose books are doing poorly and for no reason.

Review people! :)

Indie Reviews

One thing that can help get your self-published eBooks noticed, or at least more enticing to potential readers, is to have reviews.

I've checked out Three Chapters and submitted Health and Safety to have the first three chapters reviewed. They don't guarantee a positive review, but that's not what I'm looking for. A positive review would be nice, but having a professional reviewer give their input to the book will give me the critique that I need to make my works stand out in the millions of eBooks currently on the market.

Right now, Health and Safety is sitting around #65,000 for its sales rank on Amazon. This isn't a bad number, as it does equate to a few sales a week. Not enough to quit my day job, but enough to make me feel good that people are purchasing the novella.

I'm working intently on the next novel, A Dreamer's Burden, which is about a young man who dreams about future disasters. He has one major problem. If he tells somebody about his dream, the dream won't come true, but he will save countless lives. This of course translates to the public viewing him as a crazed lunatic. I'm about 15% through the first draft and my editor had a brief look and is enjoying the outline.

I'm hoping that once I get larger novels available, plus more indie reviews, my books will begin to climb the ranks.

I'm in this for the long haul and with the positive reviews I've received across my works, that has helped give me the drive I need to keep writing.

How to Market Effectively - In the Bathroom

So I recently made a trip from Moncton, New Brunswick to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - a gorgeous little town where I had the great fortune of being born and raised. My wife and I drove the six hour trip and I thought, how can I market subtly on my way.

I'm actually quite the introvert and I hate the idea of face to face marketing: "Hey, I wrote a book. It's on Amazon. People like it. You should buy it!" Doesn't really work for me. Yeah, yeah, I know there are better ways to approach it and I'm getting to that.

On our travels, we drank a lot of fluids. Mostly Diet Pepsi and juices. This meant our bladders were at full capacity numerous times through our journey.

What do you do when your bladder is full? You urinate. We could have shaved precious minutes off our journey by urinating into the empty soft drink bottles, but we decided to be a little more civilized and stop at rest stops, Tim Horton's and gas stations and use their facilities.

Here is where my first line of marketing comes in.

I printed off about a hundred of these nifty little business cards. I found an original quote (by me of course!) for added humor. I showed a tiny graphic of the cover and the service that the eBook was on and added a link to the eBook's page through a QR code. That allows people with a bar code reader to scan it with their cell phone and view the Amazon page for the book.

We placed these in the bathrooms. Usually in a stall, facing the person that may be doing their business and in there for the long haul. "Little story to read while doing your business?"

Well, it was effective. We achieved a few sales during our trip (we didn't actually track them, but that could be done through a redirected QR link).

Try it! We've been placing these cards everywhere.

Oh, and Health and Safety is free today: July 13, 2012. Mwah ha ha!

The $0.99 Kindle eBook Price...

I experimented with the 99 cent price tag for Health and Safety for the past week, just to see what sort of response I got. Well, to be honest, I didn't get any response.

Perhaps the sheer number of eBooks that are priced at this level have deterred people. There does seem to be a lot of poorly written work (I've read several dozen, but I'm not going to list them here).

I've increased the price back up to my original price point - $2.99. That seemed to have the best results for sales, even though the book is only a short novella (12k words). I'll leave the price here for another few weeks and then decide if I want to drop it somewhere between $1.09 and $2.39. I'm sure I'll find a sweet spot for the novella sized eBook eventually.

I'll be releasing a new Mouse short this week. After getting back from a nice little vacation in Nova Scotia, my mind is clear and ready to work once more.