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.
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