You only have one opportunity to create “buzz” about your book, and you don’t want to squander it. The hope is to create enough excitement about your release so that it explodes from the gate. My gate opens—hopefully with a bang—less than three months from now, on January 28. Pre-sales As you can see by the number “14” applied to this monthly post, I’ve already been creating buzz for The Art of Falling for some time now. So much so that every now and then—when people say, “Didn’t that already come out?”—I have to remind them that the bees haven’t already fled the hive! Once you get fully invested readers to pre-order, however, you can stop worrying about that. Now that pre-orders are live and the final copyedits complete, my evolving author website devotes two pages to my novel.  The first  shows the cover, a brief synopsis, trade review praise and blurbs, and—for the first time—debuts the opening chapter. If the reader is favorably impressed, she need d...

Reviews. Ten people can read the same book and you can have 10 different opinions. (This happens all the time at my book club.) Writers obsess about the 'bad' ones, and rejoice in the good ones. Is it worth caring? To a degree, yes. Why? Reviews—whether positive or not-so-great—get your book noticed. Amazon's algorithms start picking up books that have around 40 reviews (and here, it's simply quantity , not quality ). Other promotional opportunities are open only to books that have a minimum number of 4 or 5 star reviews. That number is often 20 or more. It becomes a Catch 22. You can't get promoted to garner the reviews until you have the reviews. So, how do you get them? In my indie books, I include a short paragraph after "the end" telling readers that if they enjoyed the book, a short review would be appreciated. Does it work? Maybe. It's impossible to know whether people would have left a review anyway, or if that request gave the nudge they ...

Recently, I posted about NetGalley and today we feature Kristina Radke, Community Concierge, who sends frequent updates and information about all the latest book offerings from small and large publishers who have joined their service. I find this to be a wonderful way for book reviewers to get new titles via direct downloads and have used them myself. I asked NetGalley to answer a few questions in detail, and here are the responses: What is NetGalley? NetGalley is a service that delivers digital galleys to professional readers such as reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, media, and educators. If you read and recommend books, you can request digital galleys from over 100 publishers for free! If you’re a publisher, you can offer secure digital galleys to the NetGalley community (over 36,000 members as of today) and/or to your own list of contacts. Who started it? NetGalley was created by Rosetta Solutions, and was acquired by Firebrand Technologies (who offers various ...

I have an author in mind for my Hearing Voices series here at the Blood-Red Pencil, and when I approached her about an interview and to get a copy of her newest book, she asked me if I could use NetGalley for the review copy. What? I hadn't heard of it, but the explanation sounded good to me. NetGalley delivers secure, digital galleys to professional readers. If you are a reviewer, blogger, journalist, librarian, bookseller, educator, or in the media, you can use NetGalley for FREE to read and request titles before they are published. So I went to the NetGalley website, signed up, and requested her manuscript from the publisher. In short order, I received a notice in my email that the manuscript was ready for download. I followed the directions, and soon had a pdf to read on my computer! It was that simple Of course I signed up to receive NetGalley e-letters and notifications of new publishers and the titles they are offering in digital format. I was also pleased to ...