I did it again. My clueless self asked my husband for help sending out some ARC emails. I have the list of people who signed up to be ARC readers for Force of Corruption. I wanted to send them an email asking if they’d be interested in ARC reading Force Majeure. I wasn’t having any luck copying the email addresses from the spreadsheet to an email.
I decided to copy and paste them into a Word document and see if I could copy them into an email from there. Still couldn’t get it to work for me. I asked my husband for some help. Bless his heart, he always has the high-tech solution. He explained Mail Merge in MS Office and thought it would work best for what I was trying to do.
Me being the tech challenged person I am, tried to copy the addresses from the Word document and I thought if I clicked the Mail Merge function it would somehow use those addresses to load an email form where I could write my email message and send it out. Nope. If you know how to use this function you already know the boneheaded mistake, I made. Yes, you guessed it, I emailed the list of emails to everyone on the list!! Not only that, but it was sent from my personal email. With my actual name. The name I try to keep separate from my writing life.
You may recall nobody, but my immediate family and my best friend know I'm an author. Since I write spicy books I decided when I started it would be best to keep my large extended family in the dark. It’s gone fairly well, except when my daughter outed me to my brother. She was bragging because she’s so proud of me. Now he’s proud of me too. But he told my mother. You haven’t lived until you have to explain to your octogenarian parent about the sexy books you write.
Needless to say, this week has been a big face palm and its only Sunday! I’m writing a little early because I need to get a few blogs written before my surgery on the 23rd. I'm hoping to keep posting while I recover.
I suppose I should tell you I finally got the list pasted into the email and I was able to apologize for the messed-up email and send the sign-up link to everyone. In addition to my botched email to previous ARC readers, I've been posting in every group that will let me. Before I sent the email, I had 15 ARC apps completed. As of this moment, I have 27. On average there’s a 10% return on ARC campaigns. So, if 20 people sign up, I can expect 2 reviews will be posted.
Last time I did this I was able to collect about 40 completed sign up forms. Then I posted in one reader group that I had one paperback copy left to send out to ARC readers. I posted a photo of my cute envelopes ready to ship and woke up the next day to a total of over 140 people signed up. I can’t count on a fluke like that to help me get more reviews this time. My plan is to move on to the ARC services of Booksirens, Pubby, Booksprout, NetGalley, and BookBloggers.
I’m undecided which ones I'll use, or maybe I'll try them all. I need to see how much they cost and choose which ones fit my budget. I will say, my brief exposure to Booksirens last time was a great experience. I got less than 10 reviews, but they were very well written and devoid of spoilers. I was happy with the results. I only wish I had garnered a few more.
I'll let you know which ones I choose, how much they cost, and how successful they end up. I'd love it if people have a renewed interest in Force of Corruption, especially in its newly revised form. I've been stuck at 11 reviews on Amazon forever, despite the sales. Nobody leaves a review, or they just haven’t read it yet. Either way, I need more reviews to help with visibility.
I believe Amazon will make my books more visible if I have more reviews, or it could be a myth. Just like Facebook has posted my page and group on other people’s feeds and TikTok has started recommending me, I think if you have readers, they help you get more. Until that happens, they keep you buried. Especially indie authors struggle gaining traction on Amazon. You would think they would want to share your book more often because sales for you, equal sales for them. You’d be wrong. Unless you pay for advertising or have a large audience, you’re left in no man's land wandering in the abyss.
Even my author friend, Louise Glass, who has close to 300 reviews for her debut novel, Dream Lover, doesn’t get any help from Amazon. She works her butt off advertising every single day for hours to get the sales she does. I wish I had her stamina, she’s an energy badger! She just goes all day, and she goes hard! I want to be her when I grow up!
I’d like to switch gears and talk about writing. I've been collecting a variety of writing tips from professional writers whenever I see them. They often come in the form of a nice graphic and contain a list of useful terms or words. It’s extremely helpful information. I attempt to capture the author of each information sheet, but I’m not always successful. I want to give credit to the original authors of each tip sheet, so if you’re out there please know I tried to credit you. And thank you!
One such graphic came into my possession from a great blog article by Gabriella Jayne Bosticco in an article, Brainstorm: Alternatives to “Said” on blogolepsyblog.wordpress.com if I can get the link to post here, I'll add it at the bottom. If not, Google it, it’s truly inspired and immensely helpful. It’s a huge list of dialogue tags to use in place of “said”. My favorite pieces of author advice come in an easy-to-use list form. Brian Bilston wrote a great article “How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors”. The publishing company, 4 Horseman Publications, has some wonderful suggestions for writing and getting published. They explain in great detail how to format your manuscript so publishers will accept it. Not to mention other hints and tips for writing a book that doesn’t contain newbie mistakes. I also enjoy videos on YouTube from Natalia Leigh, she has tons of great advice on formatting, writing, editing, and publishing. She’s easy to follow and not boring.
There’s also a great author Lynn Miclea who writes tons of writing advice cheat sheets. She’s got some for punctuation, grammar, word usage, you name it she covers it. I save all the tip sheets I find from her because they’re immensely useful. I've also picked up a few helpful graphics about buzz words to avoid on Amazon reviews, spice ratings for romance books, tropes for romance books, and how to tell the difference between each type of editor and the services they provide.
Do you know the difference between a developmental editor and a line editor? I do, because of the graphic I came across that clearly explains a developmental editor looks at the big picture. They focus on plot, character development, theme, point of view, etc. They’re great for when you’ve written a first draft, and you want to know if you’ve got a story or not. A line editor focuses on writing style and voice. They point out awkward phrasing, unnecessary repetition, telling vs showing, passive voice, dialogue, and they’ll flag any inconsistencies in the story.
In my limited experience a great editor will work on all of these things to some degree, including the copy editor focus of correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation. They’ll also address commonly confused words as well as ensuring consistency with capitalization, hyphenation, and numerals.
My current editor, who I love, helps with line editing and copy editing, she proofreads while she edits too. She also works fast, and we work well together. I appreciate her suggestions and notes and I never take anything personally. Its's an important thing to learn as an author, they always say you need to have thick skin to be in any artistic career. It’s so true. Art is subjective, not everyone will like your creation and that’s okay. But an editor needs to look past that and help you polish the very best version of your art possible. My new editor does exactly that and I’m thrilled with the results.
Not only is it important to have thick skin, but it’s important to be able to see how your editor is working towards a great book. If you don’t see eye to eye, don’t keep them. It has to be a good working relationship, or your work will suffer. Keep your voice, but use their suggestions to make your voice loud, clear, and entertaining.
As always, thanks for reading! Have a great weekend!
The blog article link:
https://blogolepsyblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/brainstorm-alternatives-to-said/
Great author tip sheets:
If you’re interested in the pre-order deal on Force Majeure or getting a free ARC copy, please visit my website:
https://www.enchantingauthor.com