Genres, Keywords, and Book Descriptions

If you write in a straightforward genre, this post isn't for you. I understand that sub-genres and I suppose sub-sub genres exist, but the primary classification of your book is crystal clear. Nobody understands women's fiction. I'm not even sure that all writers of it fully understand it. And it certainly doesn't help that many book marketing sites don't get it, either. Countless times I've had to choose "literary fiction" for my book's genre, because that was the only option open to me, and my books could not be further away from literary.

The very last thing a women's fiction author wants to do is label her book "romance", because romance readers are rabid dogs who will hunt you down and rip your face off if you desecrate their vaunted genre. Don't get me wrong ~ I've never done it. Just the dire warning alone kept me huddling in a corner, my body trembling and convulsing at the deadly consequences that would befall me.

However, romance writers have no compunction about labeling their kissy books as women's fiction (as a sub-genre, of course). When you're the one in charge, you get to do any damn thing you please. Because, you see, it's not enough to hog the book market, you need to lash other writers into submission.

I've said it before, but it's true ~ some of the best books I ever read had no label attached. They were either fiction or non-fiction. That's it.

So, what do I do when I'm ready to publish a book? Luckily, KDP does have a women's fiction subcategory. It's tricky to find, but it's there. My problem comes in with marketing. I can choose fiction or the dreaded literary fiction, and that's about it.

But what if my story contains elements of suspense or mystery? Well, they're not technically either of those things, and if I chose them I would need to watch my back for the pack of wild dogs again. Thus, I'm stuck.

Some sites, like LibraryThing, allow an author to choose three or more categories. What does one do? Inn Dreams, for example, is definitely women's fiction, but it does contain a mystery and it involves psychological suspense. Do I just leave it at women's fiction? With KDP I can plop those terms in as keywords and at least feel that I've covered all my bases.

Keywords, too, can present problems, though. One of the promo sites I signed up for allowed entry of ten keywords and I used as many as were relevant. Yesterday they informed me that they were nice enough to place my book in multiple categories, including romance, ostensibly because one of my keywords was "love". Not "romance"; "love". Even when I try not to call out the hounds, they get called out on my behalf. One would think a book promotion site would know better.

A big problem with pushing my books is that no one knows what they are.

Next comes the issue of book descriptions. I've gotten much better with writing them, but a book description is, aside from your cover, the book's selling point. If it's not interesting or intriguing, kiss your sales goodbye. Self-published authors have differing opinions regarding book descriptions and most of them are wrong. You just don't go on and on and on, ad nauseum, in your description. It's tiresome. A potential buyer who's scanning books will simply click onto the next one. No one cares about all your characters' unpronounceable names except you. And frankly, don't even mention more than two, at the most three, names in your description. It's dumb. No one has even read the book yet. I generally stick to the MC's name alone. I can maybe add "her boss" or "her fiance", etc., but really, people. Come on.

All that said, your book description has to tempt people to read it. Thus, I naturally highlight the inciting incident, even if the majority of my story centers around other things. I'm not trying to mislead anyone, but what would you have me do? "Mabel Mumphrey goes to work and things happen and then other things happen"? I guess my stories are just hard to describe.

The obvious answer is to just write in a different genre. I have toyed with the idea of writing a romance. I'd have to read a couple first to get the formula down, but since every crappily written romance book sells like hotcakes, I could maybe make some money for a change. Literary fiction is out. I can't do "pretentious", and even reading one single passage of literary fiction makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.

Right now, given the choice of labeling my book women's fiction or simply going with "fiction" or even "contemporary fiction", I'll go with the fiction category.

 

 

 

 

First Day Promo Results

 

Since I had so many promos running on the same day, it's impossible to know which of them produced results, but in total I managed nine sales. I do know which site did not result in any sales, and that was BookBub. Yes, the king of all book marketing sites was a dud for me once again. Not only did I not reap any sales, but I couldn't even manage a single click. I still have one day left on my promotion, but obviously this ad can be written off.

The other sites were:

• Best Book Monkey
• BookDoggy
• Book Raid
• Book Reader Magazine (although I never received a date confirmation)
• It's Write Now (a two-day promotion)
• The Fussy Librarian
  

While it's nice to see the needle move, even a tiny bit, I've spent more on advertising than I earned in sales.

It's hard not to compare oneself to other self-published authors who brag about their sales on social media. Realistically, I know that the authors like me whose product isn't moving aren't posting about it, but I still feel like the lone loser of the bunch. And I do wish the OP's would stop framing their brags as "questions". I sold 120 copies of blah blah blah dystopian fantasy the very first day, but I was wondering...

Oh, just shut up and stop "wondering". You're not wondering about anything; you just want the rest of us to feel bad. 

The simple solution for me is to stop reading these posts, but the self-publishing subreddit often contains useful info, and I'm not so delicate that I can't stomach other people's success. I'm happy for them (as happy as one can be about a total stranger); I just wish I wasn't such a total failure.

I could talk about how I possibly sabotaged myself by unintentionally leading a reader to think they were getting something they weren't, but that's not really applicable. They wouldn't know or think they were misled unless they read the book. I will write a separate post about that, though, and about the pitfalls of keywords and descriptions. It's a big umbrella topic, especially for my genre.

In the end, nine sales are better than zero sales, so I guess I'm the one who needs to shut up

 

Promo Days Begin

 

I have a few promos running today, which ones I'd have to refer to my cheat sheet to find out. As you know, I went all out on promoting Inn Dreams, and for some reason I've latched onto the belief that promos work better on weekends. I have absolutely no idea whether that's true. I just think back to my working days and how I was simply too tired after work to scroll the net for anything. I'm apparently forgetting how much time wasting I did while at work. Yes, now it can be said without repercussions. In my defense, my job had its busy seasons and its non-busy seasons, and during the lulls there was only so much "organizing" I could do. And it's not as if I was the only slacker. Even my boss wasted a lot of time (think I didn't notice?) So, yes, no doubt people shop for books at work, but I'm sticking to my weekend opinion because this isn't something worth agonizing over.

I'm not necessarily disappointed that the book still has no reviews. "Resigned" is a more accurate description. And, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. I'm now convinced that the almost eighty ARC readers I've landed through Voracious Readers Only haven't read my book. Maybe they're all saving it for one of those power outage days when there's nothing else to do. Personally, the fact that I have a thousand books on my Kindle doesn't exactly fill me with delight, but everyone is different. Plus, if they have a thousand or so free books on their device to choose from, they can easily abandon one and move on to the next. That's why I always strive for a good opening line, but I guess that hasn't worked.

I'm not above guilting people into leaving a review, which is why I added a note to my upcoming newsletter, stating, "If you have a free minute..."  

I've come to the realization that I don't like marketing. At first it felt ripe with possibilities. With my very first ad, I just knew magic would happen. When it didn't, I decided I wasn't doing it right. I'd been assured, after all, that marketing works. But the biggest determinant of advertising success in the publishing industry is genre. One could write the most putrid, amateurish book and still boast on Reddit that it sold a hundred copies its first day. I chose a few dud sites this time around in my quest to hit up every semi-plausible promo site, and I need to learn to temper my enthusiasm. I don't like that some of them have about five affiliated sites; it just seems "scammy" to me. I almost signed up with another one yesterday until I saw that it listed a bunch of others within its network, and that rubbed me the wrong way. Plus, as I've mentioned before, I like to have numbers in front of me that show a site's readership. An absence of that is concerning. Anyone can set up a site and charge money for a listing. I could do it. (I wouldn't).

It's possible that I could net a sale or two from my eleven promos. That's about how many I got from promoting Lies and Love. I'll just call it a little diversion ~ something that causes me to check my KDP sales report. I'm easily entertained.

 

Advancing a Story Through Dialogue

The NY Book Editors have an interesting piece on common dialogue mistakes. Fortuitously, I avoid almost all of them. My dialogue has a purpose. I don't write, "Hi, how are you?" "Fine, thanks."

I do "insert action", as the article puts it, if by action the writer means a character doing other things while conversing. Rarely do two people sit face-to-face staring intently into each other's eyes (unless they're infatuated teenagers). People do things, even inconsequential things like straighten a pile of magazines on the coffee table or zip into the kitchen to refill their coffee cup. When I do add action to dialogue scenes I try to make it relevant, not just filler. During my writing session yesterday, the main character's mother unconsciously massaged the finger that her wedding ring used to adorn. This was in the midst of a conversation in which MC asked her mother what her fondest wish was. Mom had lost her husband years ago, and that unconscious act signaled her regret. 

In the eight points the article covers, I plead guilty to "getting too creative with dialogue tags". Apparently tags like, "she sighed" are distracting to the reader. The author states that action should be substituted instead, although if I employ the article's example of "Sam tossed the frame across the room with a heavy grunt", I'm going to end up with a lot of broken objects, sort of like a Poltergeist movie. However, I'm going to try to minimize my habit of constantly describing how words are uttered. I do, though not purposely, try to lead a reader where I want them to go by over-explaining or over-describing. Perhaps that's a bit disrespectful. Readers aren't dummies like me.

When I found the referenced article, what I was really searching for were ways to avoid over-reliance on dialogue. It's probably my biggest writing downfall. In yesterday's writing session almost the entirety of what I wrote consisted of two long dialogue scenes. Worse, they were almost back-to-back (involving different characters, but still). Maybe that's just too much. Probably it's too much. I suppose the scenes need to be separated by something else happening. While both conversations were edifying -- thus, they advanced the story, I'm troubled by my execution. Does anyone want to read a long block of dialogue? That seems more like a play than a book. Well, I guess that's what editing is for.

Too, when I'm stuck on where to go next, I revert to dialogue. And that was my problem yesterday. I'm edging toward MC's ultimate decision, but I haven't quite figured out how to get her there. Apparently she had two big hurdles to get over -- not disappointing her mother and her trepidation about how much saying yes would change her life. Those two dialogue scenes accomplished that, but not in the most compelling of ways.

I left off with her taking a walk (when all else fails, says the unimaginative writer). Something, lord knows what, will happen on that walk, either physically happen or just spark in her brain. Maybe she'll run into someone. I haven't a clue.

I hope I'm nearing the end of this particular rewrite. The story's okay; again, like most of my stories, not particularly earth-shattering. But I'm itching to create something new.

One day I hope to compose a story that doesn't require a rewrite.

 

  

Sorry, But This Makes No Sense

As of this writing, 77 readers have claimed Inn Dreams from Voracious Readers Only, yet I still have no reviews. Some Reddit users say that VRO is simply a way for people to "fill up their Kindles with free books", so have I once again fallen for an offer that was too good to be true? 

I suppose out of desperation I could send people an email, politely asking them to leave a review, but that seems rather distasteful; plus do you know how many separate emails I'd need to create? Gmail can't handle one single email with 77 recipients. I thought about contacting VRO with a question about my absence of reviews, but their person doesn't seem too welcoming. When I did ask about, in essence, shutting off my current promotion, he was quite curt and just pasted a link that would allow me to "change" books, which is not what I asked.

I did add a line to my upcoming July newsletter asking (politely again) for my ARC readers to leave a review, but if it's true that none of these 77 people have even read Inn Dreams, that's not going to help. 

I fully understand that the average review rate for a book hovers around 1 - 2%, no matter what means an author uses to find readers, but obviously I haven't even scaled that low bar.

Now I'm starting to question whether to continue with this service. There really is no better alternative; I just think that none of them work.

When I used to plug our band's music, it was much easier to get someone to listen than it is to convince readers to read. On the one hand, I get it. I receive monthly "First Read" emails from Amazon that give me a choice of one free book, and I generally pick one. I've yet to read any of them, even though they sound interesting at the time. But Amazon and I aren't in a relationship, per se. We don't have some unspoken agreement that just because they're offering me something for free, I need to reciprocate. ARC readers know, or should know, that to live up to their end of the bargain they should review the books they're being gifted. Why do Goodreads ARC readers understand that, if it's such a difficult concept? Two stinkin' reviews are all I've gotten for this book and both are posted on Goodreads, which is a pretty good average, since I believe I only sent out three or four copies.

On BookSprouts, too, none of my grand total of seven readers have left a review. I wonder if my $112.00 in book promotions will yield any. 

It's not that I'm bothered by giving away so many books. What else am I going to do with them? Face it, the people who received one weren't going to magically find it on Amazon and purchase it. I'm not losing income on the deal. But the purpose of ARCs is to accumulate reviews so maybe a new person might give it a chance. 

I've spent far too much time and invested too much energy in pushing a book that hasn't a future to begin with. It's just a story, an average run-of-the-mill story; not bad, not great. I know why I convinced myself that I believed in it. It's because I toiled so hard to turn it into almost a full-length novel, rather than the short story it initially was. But hard work doesn't equal excellence. It's not even my favorite out of my eleven published works. Lies and Love, though shorter, is better. So is Shadow Song.

While it's good for a writer to take pride in her work, she also must be realistic. I seem to have a problem doing that.

 

Going All Out

With Lies and Love I kind of half-assed the marketing plan (not that I had a plan). I advertised for ARC readers on Goodreads, which netted me maybe five, only a few of them leaving a review. Social media was completely worthless and the Facebook ARC groups I joined were a disaster. I tried a few promo sites, the cheap ones, but the most money I spent was perhaps $40.00. One site was a pay-per-click, which cost me $0.00 in the end (!!)

This time around I got serious. I used all the previous sites except for one, and that was the free UK listing that only managed to net me a two-star review, which still rankles me, especially since the reviewer didn't bother to write any text. 

I also added a few new sites and a couple of old standbys.

ARC Readers

By far my biggest success has been with Voracious Readers Only. I am still on my 30-day free trial, and as of this writing, I've netted 72 ARC readers, but still zero reviews.  

The Goodreads ARC groups I posted in were less forthcoming this time around. I might have gotten three readers (four at the most) and two Goodreads reviews (still no Amazon reviews!)

As I've detailed here, BookSprouts does work if you know the pitfalls of creating a campaign. I wasted two weeks of my membership simply because I created a "team" (which was one of the fields and was not clarifying). After I played around with my campaign and deleted my team, I began getting readers. As of right now, I have seven.

Promos

Here we go.

Starting with two of the (possibly) big four: 

BookBub ~ I dedicated $20.00 to an ad that will run June 29 and 30. Spending any more than that has not proven to produce any results; in fact, the only time one of my BookBub ads performed well was when I gave away a book for free. I used David Gaughram's instructions and chose three comp authors. Luckily I had looked up comps when I submitted to LibraryThing's giveaway, because this exercise is a real slog (which is why I only netted three). Searching "women's fiction" mostly yields romance books. I made that mistake before with BookBub, in which I cited some authors who turned out to write romance. I'd only looked at their books, not their primary genre, and the book descriptions I viewed clearly pointed to women's fiction. I guess they're hybrid writers. This time I did better. And I targeted the US, Canada, and the UK. I never once had any success with Australia.

The Fussy Librarian ~  This was an impulse buy. I received a 40%-off offer via email, so I grabbed it. My ad will run on June 29 and cost me $16.50. I've utilized their offshoot, BargainBooksy, in the past, but only moved one or two books. I also once participated in one of The Fussy Librarian's "Subscriber Surge" giveaways, in which entrants had a chance to win twenty books and a Kindle, and increased their chances by signing up for the authors' newsletters. This was how I initially gained subscribers (it cost me $70.00 to participate), but the only genre I could choose from was literary fiction, so needless to say, these people are not my desired fanbase. Like with my BookBub ad, I'm not expecting any positive results. Maybe both these sites are just too competitive.

Other Sites:

Awesome Gang ~ The site is free if you simply want social media promotion. I chose the $10.00 featured listing, which insures inclusion in its newsletter. My promo runs on June 30.

Best Book Monkey ~  I had to choose the "gold" package because I'm not offering my book for free. My promo runs on June 29. The regular price for my genre is $21.50, but I had a promo code, which reduced my cost to $10.75.

BookDoggy ~  BookDoggy offers various basic means of promotion (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, placement on its website) in addition to a newsletter, and it supposedly has "tens of thousands" of subscribers. My promo cost $24.00, which is a bit pricey. I'm scheduled for June 29.

BookGoodies ~ I paid $18.50 for my promo (with a promo code). This is for a seven-day promo, which will run from July 5 to July 11. There is also an author interview option, which I completed, because why not? The questions are somewhat annoying, but I'm easily annoyed.

Book Raid ~  The site operates on a pay-per-click model. At my book's price point, the cost is twenty cents per click (free books are cheaper). The max one will pay is $60.00, but the last time I used it, I paid nothing (!!), Nevertheless, hope springs eternal. Books are advertised via newsletter.  My promo will run on June 29.

Book Reader Magazine ~  Normally $20.00, I had a coupon that gave me $10.00 off. Homepage placement for seven days, social media, newsletter. You can also complete an author interview, but I did that with Lies and Love, so it's a moot point. I selected June 29, but I'm still waiting for a confirmation.

Discount Book Man ~  Most likely not related to Mister Bookman from Seinfeld. I paid $10.00 with my $5.00-off coupon for a seven-day homepage listing. It will also be promoted via newsletter and social media. I am scheduled for June 30.

eReaderIQ ~  It's free to list your book. All the site asks for is the ASIN number. I tried to add Inn Dreams, but it was already there. The site must be affiliated with Amazon or Goodreads somehow, since it pulls all an authors books in.

It's Write Now ~ I chose the standard package, which was $10.00. This gets my book listed on the homepage for three days and also included in the newsletter and "10 posts on social media". I'm signed up for June 29 - July 1. This is a bit pricey for what the site offers, but I was intent on covering all my bases.

My Book Place ~  I paid $18.75 with a coupon. This gives me seven days, from July 1 - July 7 for homepage placement and newsletter inclusion. Social media, too, which is neither here nor there. 

LibraryThing Giveaway ~  Although I never received an email from the site, Inn Dreams is apparently scheduled for July. Authors can offer up to 30 copies of their book; I chose 25, and I used a Google Docs link for downloading. I was disappointed with my Lies and Love giveaway ~ only 13 copies were awarded out of the 25 I offered, and I only heard back from about seven of the winners. I did receive two four-star reviews, however.

The IndieView ~ This is an aggregator of book blogs, but an author can do an interview, which I did. As for the blogs themselves, I may have submitted to one, but I never received a response.

In total, that's $112.00, not counting Book Raid, which could well cost me $0.00. This is far more than I've ever spent on promoting a book, and it'll be the first and last time. I suppose it's kind of an expensive (for me) experiment, but it would be so nice to see some movement just once.

Since most of these promos are scheduled for the same or next-door dates, it'll be difficult to determine which, if any, work out. 

I think my lack of reviews overall (not just for Inn Dreams) means that none of my books have made enough of an impression for anyone to bother leaving one, or everyone disliked them so much they didn't want to hurt my feelings. That's unsolvable unless I suddenly hit upon an extraordinary idea and manage to execute it beyond my current capabilities. 

Good thing I like to write, because that's all I derive from it ~ enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

It's a Secret ~ Book Promo Sites

I've begun dabbling in promoting Inn Dreams, and as you know, I'm only looking at reasonably priced sites. I do have a small list of sites I used in the past, but it's worth looking in unfamiliar places as well. I had bookmarked a couple of new ones as I ran across them, and I delved into those yesterday. Ultimately I determined that they weren't for me. One labels itself an online book fair, in which authors of the same genre get together and create a "fair". Not only does it require the authors themselves to promote it, but it charges far too much for that "privilege". Another was simply out of my price range, especially for an unattractive interface.

A couple of the promo sites I've previously utilized provide a list of other sites as well. They all may be inter-related; I don't know, but any site for which I can't find a price list is immediately suspicious to me. One has to fill out the submission form entirely before even finding out how much the promo will cost. To a writer who's poor, believe me, there's a huge difference between fifteen dollars and fifty. 

Aside from hiding their pricing, I like to know how much of a readership a site has and what genre it favors. Again, this is where ROI comes into play. For all I know, some of these amateurish-looking sites might have only five participants. If a site is doing well, it should want to flaunt that. And I don't want to find myself stuck on a romance site, because no one will want my book.  

I know what the "biggie" operations are: BookBub, to some extent the Written Word Media twins of BargainBooksy and FreeBooksy and The Fussy Librarian. One thing these places do right is focus on the book. All the tiny places basically ask for an author's life history and her every social media link. What reader cares about an author's social media? I sure don't. Filling out these forms might feel productive at the time, but it's just busywork. All a site should ask for, if anything, is an author's website address. 

Then there are the super-picky places. One requires a book to have a certain number of reviews (difficult if the book was just released), some have a minimum star rating. Some require both. Hey, I'm paying you. Take my money. And frankly, if they're worried about sullying their reputation, they first should have a reputation. 

I'm not sure yet which other sites I'll advertise on. I keep staring at my list and not feeling pumped about any of them. I can take the easy way out and use BookBub again, but contrary to what other authors (and Gaughram, for that matter) say, BookBub is no magic bullet. In fact, most of my BookBub ads performed terribly. Plus there's the whole "comp author" thing I hate. 

As for old business, apparently Voracious Readers Only won't stop offering Inn Dreams as an ARC until I replace it with another book (which isn't near ready). I'm not crazy about that.

And my BookSprout campaign now has seven takers. Not awful for a site that specializes in romance. 

I've yet to hear from LibraryThing about my giveaway submission, which is odd since July is coming right up. Even if an author is declined, LT sends them an email to let them know. Maybe I messed up somehow and my submission didn't go through. At this point it hardly matters. Do I really need more ARC readers? I have too many right now. And I'm thinking Inn Dreams isn't going over well. I have two Goodreads reviews which are kind of backhanded compliments. They don't explicitly say it, but I read them as, "It's not that bad!" (And no, I just looked because one of the promo sites asked me how many reviews my book has. You know I don't intentionally read reviews.)  

And all those ARC readers? Even the one who raved about my book and promised to post her review on day one? Zero Amazon reviews. It's just a stupid, worthless game.

On that cheery note, I'm off to stare at my promo list again and figure out what I can afford.