I am asked to critique books for authors and I’m glad to do
so but sometimes it’s very painful. Many times it’s the grammar, sometimes the
content, and other times it’s the fluff.
If you’ve asked people to go to Amazon Kindle for instance,
read your book and then leave a review and they don’t do it, they may be doing
you a favor! Personally if I do not have anything good to say or if my rating
would be below 4 stars, I do not leave a review but I will contact the author
by email and direct them to specific numbered bullet points that are
appropriate to things they need (in my humble opinion) to do. Because I get
many of the same questions over time, I have found that this is a time saver
for me so I don’t have to keep typing my fingers away saying the same thing to
different authors.
I will point out here that there is a formula or a
percentage that states that there is only 3 to 1% of any population of anything
(in this case) authors who make any real money or have success. It’s because they
don’t put the time in to create quality stuff that people are willing to
purchase. Going to my blog and first looking at these bullet points is not the “end
all” and I’m not going to tell anyone that I’m the world’s expert but I am
sharing this information at no cost and it sure would not “hurt” to look at it,
right? But using the percentages above, 97 to 99% of the authors who want me to
review and critique their book never go there to read them, then less than that
go away making any suggested changes. They’ve uploaded their book and “what it
is, is what it is, and I’m not going to bother. I will just hope that people
buy it” is their thinking. Well here’s the news folks and it has been around
since Lincoln: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but if you publish
crap on Kindle (or similar sites) people may buy your book, but they will never
buy anything else from you again; ever! Do you want to risk that? Kindle
actually “polices” their published works and will contact you telling you that
your work is “common” and can be found anywhere and they may hint that it is “crap”
but not come right out and tell you.
And pricing… really? You want how much for that? It’s like a
real estate investor asking a home owner where you got the price to list their house.
Where did you get your price? If you said “out of your mind”, I say that you
must be! Let’s say that you are charging $2.99 for less than 29 pages. You
better be telling me how to make a ton more than my $2.99 investment or you’ve
wasted my 15 minutes. And, will I ever purchase a book listed with you as the
author again, unlikely. Think about it. Unless you are part of the 40% that is
feeding from the government trough, are independently wealthy or making 10K a
month selling books or something else, $2.99 is $2.99. If you earn $10 per
hour, you worked over 15 minutes to earn that $2.99; don’t have your readers
wishing they had gone to McDonalds.
Let’s talk a bit about grammar, content and fluff in my next
post. If you are missing these informative posts you might consider registering
to “follow by email”. It’s probably costing you readers and customers if you
are not.
Make it a great day!
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