Finding reviewers

It’s good to build up a team of reviewers. I’ve started that and I give you access to them: http://www.gilljameswriter.eu/p/my-dream-team.html You can see it’s small as yet but we’re constantly adding to it. Would you like to join? You can find more detail here: http://www.gilljameswriter.eu/search/label/Dreamteam and sign up for any of the DreamTeam opportunities.

There are also various lists of reviewers. This one is quite good: http://melanierockett.com/book-reviewers-directory/ However, you have to work carefully with it. Often you’ll spend a lot of time finding the right reviewer, only to find that they’re not taking on any more reading right at this moment.

In the end, you will need to create your own team of reviewers. This will probably depend on you keeping a well-curated mailing list. This will take time to build up.

There is another side to this: we should all make the effort to review. It need only be a couple of lines sometimes and a star-rating. Naturally, though, this mustn’t take away too much of your own writing time. I’ll qualify this a little, however, and say that reviewing is writing – but you know what I mean.

I give a 4* or 5* review to anything that really wows me and I’ll also put that on my site http://gillsrecommendedreads.blogspot.co.uk/ If I’m invited to review I’ll be brutally honest though I will try and contact the author if I can if it’s going to be dire.

You do have to be careful that you don’t get into a tit-for-tat situation. You can’t offer good reviews for the sake of obtaining good reviews. That could be worse that fake news and alternative facts. Just as you should only like on Facebook and Twitter what you genuinely like.    

Proof-reading and grammar

You have to smile. A recent review of one out books stated: “…. does suffer from occassional misspellings and one or two grammatical errors”. Pots and kettles come to mind.  

All of the imprints I work with proof their scripts three times. The original editor,  the author and one other person in the company read the camera-ready script.

If I’m going to be picky, I could really slam the sentence above. A book is not sentient so cannot suffer. Please learn to spell “occasional”. One or two errors? How many is it?

English grammar is peculiar, anyway. There is no definitive authority over it and it is governed more by precedent and usage. Some say we should not split infinitives but part of Star Trek’s charm is how it has dared to boldly split infinitives the way no man has ever split them before. Indeed, there is a subtle difference in meaning between boldly splitting infinitives and splitting infinitives boldly. Australia has lost the accusative. Australians regularly use “I” when “me” is more normal here and in the States: e.g. “Will you accompany Jason and I?”   

I’m actually quite a fan of grammar. I went to a grammar school where in the first year three of our six English lessons were about grammar. We then went on to learn French, German and Latin via the grammatical method. It’s up there with algebra problems and crosswords. Importantly it gives a backbone to the language and clarifies. Language is more than just words. How they relate to each other is important. Noam Chomsky recognizes a universal grammar. Every language needs to be able to express certain ideas that come not from the words alone but from how they relate to each other. I have it all pretty well nailed.

With another hat on I teach Creative Writing in higher education. I encourage students to write with what might be considered “correct” grammar and take heed when the spell check says “Fragment, consider revising.” If a text is presented without “grammatical” mistakes it’s easier to sell in on the other side of the Atlantic. That of course is a huge market. Only go against the conventions if doing so allows the words to have more impact.

In the collection of flash fiction we’re looking at here some oddities of grammar are to do with the voice of the character in the story. That is fine. We distribute to the USA as a matter of course anyway.  

      

By the way, the average number of typos / spelling / grammatical mistakes in a publication that has gone through all of the stages of editing is fifteen. In a very few there are none at all. In some self-published books there are hundreds. I usually manage to find four or five when I’m reading.    

  

   

Writing to reviewers

Reviewers are really our life blood. We need those all-important 50 reviews on Amazon before they’ll actually start promoting us. It really doesn’t matter if some of them are only 1*, 2* or 3*. Yes, those can hurt but I know many a book I’ve enjoyed I’ve only read some books myself because of my curiosity about why they got such a poor review.

You have to grow a thick skin.

It’s good to send a nice letter, and further tailor it to the particular reviewer.

Here’s my example:

Dear ( put reviewer’s name here),

I wonder whether you would care to review my book. I can send it to you as a PDF, an –e-mobi file or in hard copy.

(Put your blurb here and be sure to include the title of the book. In fact, what you have  here should be part way between a blurb and a synopsis. It shouldn’t give the game away and it should have all the melodrama of a normal blurb, but it may need a few more acts as well, like target audience, a sense of genre and maybe what the reader might be like. What else might your reader read.)

Your review will mean a lot to me.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Your name. 

And don;t forget to thank them after they've written your review.  

Next up we’ll look at where you might get some reviewers.

Building a good author web site

You may not have a web site yet if you’re not published. There are, however, several arguments that you could and even that you should.

You can include:

·          Extracts from your work in progress

·          Articles related to any research you’ve done for your book

·          Details about your writing process    

·          Detail of any prizes or awards you’ve won

 

How to build your web

You can either build it yourself or get someone to build it for you. You can find some very helpful tips here: http://www.wordpooldesign.co.uk/ . Diana and Steve Kimpton also have a design service. Here is a good example of a site they’ve designed. http://www.beverleynaidoo.com/

You can as mentioned in the article on blogs use www.wordpress.com or parent organisation www.wordpress.org. Blogger works well, too, also as described in the post on blogging. Find it at https://www.blogger.com  

Whichever route you go, you will need two very important featrues:

·         You own domain name. Your own name plus .co.uk or .com are the best though you may also choose.eu or .net and you may have to compromise on your name if you share it with a well-known person. You can always add in an middle initial or the word “writer”.

·         You must be able to update it regularly. This may be awkward if you have the web site designed by a third party. However, web designers will often allow you a few pages you can edit yourself. Wordpool, mentioned above, most certainly do. If you have learnt coding or can already code yourself you are in a winning position.         

 

Your web site as a marketing tool

Make sure there is a call to action on the home page. This will be an invite to buy your book once you’re published but it can also be an offer of some free material – perhaps a report on your research, a book you’ve enjoyed, or the offer of a service you provide for free or very cheap. Make this a way of capturing an email address. Mail Chimp is very good for this. Then, once you have a book to advertise you can tell all of these people about it and ask them for reviews.

As well as this though, make your web site:

·         Informative

·         Friendly

·         Entertaining

That will all help you to get a following.

Tips on making your site look good

• Don’t be afraid of white space.
• Choose a nice, large, readable font.
• Be careful when wrapping copy around images.
• Never stretch a font.
• Only justify your text to the left.
• Don’t use too many different colours.

Not, though, not all of the examples below do all of this. Look ay how they’ve bent the “rules” and consider why.  

Some nice examples

Cathie Dunn

This has that all important call to action on the first page and in fact takes up most of the screen. But she also tells you why you should buy her book – the images that float across the screen are tantalising. She has information about herself, her work in progress and offers a newsletter. There are some very nice pictures.

Candy Gourlay

Candy has used Blogger here and very effectively too. The landing page is the blog itself but it the side bars we have some very useful information – more in this case about her school visits than about her books. There is a really big call to action at the top of the page. You are invited to subscribe to her newsletter. She has a separate page for her books, in fact.               

Sara Grant

Sara writes for younger readers and for teens so cleverly has links on the left for the former and on the right for the latter. Headers across the top of the home page make the site easy to navigate. It is packed with information for her readers and also for teachers and librarians.

You can find more helpful tips here.

Now then, go build that web site!      

The Good Blog

Clearly it should entertain and inform – preferably at the same time. Some writers who are not yet published hesitate about creating a blog or a web site as they do not yet have a book out there. But maybe the blog doesn’t need to be just about books. It can be about the subject of your book, your writing process, you, something else, or a mixture of all of these things. As you can set them up for free, you can get started straight away. More about that later.

All in one place or separate?

I personally like to keep separate blogs for separate purposes. The one you’re reading right now is about what I see as a publisher. I’ve recently posted here about marketing  routines and now I’m looking in closer detail at some items.

I have other blogs:

Gills Recommended Reads  is my reviewing site where I share books that are so good they have taken me out of my editor’s head.

Gill’s Sample Fiction is exactly what it says it is. Here I publish extracts from my fiction.

The Creative Café Project   is all about my project identifying cafés that facilitate creative practitioners meeting each other and their audiences.  

The House on Schellberg Street  is all about my Schellberg Cycle of books and also contains a lot of background material to the books. It is designed to be a useful tool for anyone studying the Holocaust. Unusually it gives quite a lot of the German perspective.

Writing Teacher is all about my life as a teacher of creative writing and I’m currently adding in some craft workshops.

Gill James Writer is where I blog about writing and occasionally about my books.  This and the Creative Café Project are the two most popular.

Other people blog about a variety of topics in one place. See:

Carol Hedges

Debz Hobbs-Wyatt

Allison Symes Allison often takes you to a landing page where you can pick which of her blogs you want to read. In effect, she uses a hybrid method.    

So, all in one place or divided by topic?

Here’s a snapshot of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

All in one place

You can probably blog every day. However, you might lose your friends who are not writers or lose writing friends who are less interested in you personally.

Diverse titles

You’re blogging less often but your blogs are more focussed.

I actually think both methods are valid and in the end it is up to you to decide which one is better for you.  

What can / should a writer blog about?

Well here are a couple of lists I’ve found useful:

DIY Author                    

         

40 types of content

Look at other blogs for even more ideas.   

Where to host your blog

There are two providers that will host your blog for free. I favour Blogger as this is what I’m used to. However, Word Press is just as good.

Look at what you can achieve with Blogger: Words and Pictures This is an ezine that is published almost daily.  

You do have the option of attaching a custom domain name. I have done this with Gill James Writer, The House on Schellberg Street and for The Creative Café Project.  

What we find in reviews

When we review our author’s blogs with our marketing hats on we often notice a lack of a call to action. You need to make it irresistible for your reader. Whoever comes to your post shouldn’t fail to follow you or eventually buy your book.         

Do have fun with this. Planning your blog can be almost as creative as writing the book itself.