My biggest and most dreaded event happened as the clock struck twelve ~ Whispers in the Dark is now live on Amazon. There are only a couple of ways this novella could engender any reviews; either by someone grabbing it from my Goodreads library list or if my one solitary BookBub follower is so enamored with my writing that she chooses to buy it. So, I'm pretty safe, overall. I'll be more than happy to let this one languish.
I opened my email today to find that Lies and Love has gotten a review from one of the book blogs I'd submitted to, which is strange because my sales report doesn't show any purchases since March 9. So either someone didn't actually read the book and decided to troll it with a fake review, or the person is a very slow reader, considering that Lies and Love is a short novella. As per my policy, I will not check out the review, and frankly, reviews are worthless for someone like me whose books are rarely discovered.
I understand that one can improve their Amazon ranking by garnering a lot of positive reviews, but I will never have "a lot" and who says they'd all be positive?
And what, by the way, does an author gain by upping their sales rank? Realistically. If I managed to sell ten copies, I'd earn ten-to-twenty dollars, minus Amazon's cut. I'm not rich, but I'm also not destitute.
A ninety-nine cent book is hardly worth my fretting over it. I'd go back and re-up the price to match all my other offerings, but I apparently still have one promotion upcoming. Or, and this would be more practical, I could simply lower all my other books' prices to match.
While we're talking pricing, I will never list my books for free, unless I'm doing a limited-time promo. (That was required once, I believe, by one site I tried out.) Fuck free. My time and creative talents are worth something, even if nobody buys my books. I'd rather keep my self-respect than to advertise, "This book is worthless. Pick it up if you want."
I've read all the arguments for pricing a book for free: a) it gets eyes on your book and thus more reviews; b) it'll drive interest in your catalog; c) it creates sales of subsequent books in a series.
a) BS. Anytime I've promo'd a free book, I've gotten zero reviews.
b) BS. I don't know of anyone who's read one of my books and then purchased another.
c) Shrug. Maybe, but I doubt it. I can't even imagine writing a whole book series, so this point means nothing to me anyway.
I'll add a "d": It's obvious that a lot of people like to acquire free books they'll never read. That's apparently the hunter-gatherer instinct. "Oh, I don't read them. I just like having a bunch on my Kindle."
I sometimes wonder what an indie author's motivation is. As an indie author myself, I sort of know, but I think my outlook diverges from most. Yes, I would like some sort of recognition. Everyone does, no matter if it's cooking a nice meal or painting a picture. We want someone to say, "Hey! That's good!" Perhaps "validation" would be the correct term. We're all insecure in our abilities, except for those blowhards who have an ego the size of a hot-air balloon.
A lot of amateur writers imagine becoming a best-selling, world-famous author. They probably won't admit it, but they do. Not me. I'm past the imagining phase I might have possessed when I was twenty.
I'm practical. I self-publish my books because simply housing them on my hard drive is worthless. I enjoy seeing them online, available for anyone to buy. That proves to me that I did something. It's a public summation of what I did with my time and creativity.
Tomorrow may be a writing day. My schedule varies from week to week. While I'm relieved that what I've written so far is actually good, I still don't know where I'm heading with this story. That's never stopped me before, but strangely, I've become more reticent. That's another drawback to accumulating a few reviews. I now know that someone could potentially read my future work.
Anonymity has its upside.
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