Talk About The Blues by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

The Review Blues, that is

Source: http://threeminds.organic.com

I want to talk just a little about the Lost Art of Book Reviewing. I’m bringing this up not because I haven’t gotten any reviews (I have), but because I’d like to have a lot more than I do, and I’d like to have them be a little more considered.

First of all, if you’ve read and reviewed one of my books, or any book by any author, thank you. Readers may not realize it, but reviews are the best way to repay authors. Let’s face it, unless your name is Stephen King or JK Rowling, you’re not getting rich off your writing. I make ten percent royalty on the sale of a print copy of Just Cause (retails for $14.99) and fifty percent from an ebook edition (retails for $2.99). Basically, every time someone clicks on a “buy” link, I make about a buck fifty. To replace my day job income, I’d need to sell well over a hundred books a day, which isn’t going to happen any time soon. But I can get there some day, and that requires my book to show up on more lists, and for that to happen, it needs to be reviewed a lot more.

So if you risked your 99 cents or $2.99 or even $14.99 (or free!) to download an ebook or buy a print book, and you took the time to read it, your review, good or bad, can help another prospective buyer to decide whether or not to take the same chance you did. That can translate into another sale, or five sales, or fifty sales down the road for an author. That’s a great way to pay back an author for his or her work.

Now, I’m not going to tell you how to write a review, because everyone has their own method. What I am going to do is tell you how I review books. I review everything I read – even short stories – because I want to pay those authors back for their time investment in providing me with a modicum of entertainment. Pretty much every website follows the same 5-star ranking system, whether it’s Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, etc.

Star Ratings:

1 star – I reserve this exclusively for books I chose not to finish. If I give a book a 1-star rating, it is because I didn’t like it enough to invest any more time in it. Fair enough; not every reader likes every book. However, if I give a book a 1-star rating, I explain that (a) I didn’t finish the book and (b) why I dropped it. The second part is important, because I want to give other potential readers more information than just a one-star review with no text attached (which is worthless).

2 star – This is for books I finished but didn’t like. My rationale for finishing despite not liking can be due to a variety of reasons. The most common now that I have an ebook reader is a poorly-formatted ebook. Whether it’s the fault of a self-published author for either not learning how to do it properly or spending the money to make sure someone else does it properly, or the fault of a regular publisher doing a poor job, there is no excuse in my mind for poor formatting. The same goes for poor editing. An otherwise-compelling book that is poorly-edited will get a two-star rating from me. And again, I want to stress that I explain why I give the rating that I do.

3 star – This is the rating I give for a book that was produced well but left me kind of disappointed overall. If I thought it was just okay, I’ll give it a three-star. These are, in my mind, the hardest books to review, because I have to try to put my finger on what exactly it is that didn’t appeal to me. This is when I have to be at my most critical. The important thing for me to remember with a three-star review is that I did finish the book, and I did like it overall, but for whatever reason, it didn’t quite connect with me. Good writers that are meh storytellers, or meh writers that tell great stories often find themselves in this category with me.

4-star – If I liked a book, this is usually the rating I will give. When I feel the writing is good, and the story is also good, four stars are warranted. My review will generally run to praise (spoiler-free! Important not to give things away!). These are usually easy reviews to write because I liked the book, and want to tell others why they should give it a look.

5-star – I actually give these out very rarely, because it’s uncommon for me to find a book that I just can’t put down, that I talk about constantly, that I read passages aloud to people who clearly don’t care, that I think about long after finishing it. 5-star books to me are ones I wish I’d written. To me, a book with a 5-star review is and will always be one of the Best Books I Ever Read. When I review them, I heap praise on the author and the book, and I’m not shy about bubbling, because they’re worth it. Here are the five-star reviews I’ve given out over the past year (you should read these books!): Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine, Wild Cards by George R.R. Martin (and others), Triplanetary by E.E. “Doc” Smith, Burn Down the Sky by James Jaros, Under the Scotch Broom and Dead Wives Tales by Allison M. Dickson, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick, and Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran.

Finally, I copy and paste the review onto Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, since those are the three primary places where people buy and select their books. If I bought the book from Smashwords, I will also post a review there. Note: Smashwords does not currently permit you to review a book that you have not purchased from there.

Presenting my newest release, Tales of the Weird Wild West!

This collection includes both previously-published and all-new material:

THE MIGHTY PECULIAR INCIDENT AT MUDDY CREEK-What starts out as something simple as a train failing to stop winds up as something mighty peculiar indeed.

CLOCKWORK CHLOE-Bert Tillory can get any woman to say yes, but who is he really looking for?

POSSE-Sometimes when riding down a fugitive, it’s hard to tell who’s the hunter and who’s being hunted.

HANGING THE MAGICIAN-It’s one thing to capture the most notorious horse thief in the West, but quite another to carry out his sentence.

ALL IN-How high can the stakes truly get for a single hand of poker?

SPRING LOADED-Love and revenge, clockwork-style.

All this, plus an original cowboy poem and a preview of the novel PARIAH’S MOON!

$2.99 on Smashwords, and soon to be in Kindle and Nook stores as well!

Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimi Hendrix

Might even raise a little sand

I have a new agent! Carly Watters of P.S. Literary Agency will be representing The Guitarist as well as some future projects. I’m excited to be working with her and looking forward to driving yet another wedge into the realm of publishing with my name on it.

On The Outside by Sheryl Crow

State of grace, state of sin

Just Cause (the ebook) is available from darn near every ebook retailer except for some reason on Amazon, which I know is frustrating to Kindle owners all over. What you may not realize is that if you buy the ebook either through New Babel Books directly or via Smashwords, you can download a Kindle-formatted file and then sideload it onto your Kindle. To assist you in this, I’m reprinting the directions from the Smashwords FAQ page here:

How do I download books to my Kindle or Kindle Fire?
You’ll find links to all your purchased books in your Smashwords Libary. There are two options for loading Smashwords ebook content to your Kindle or Kindle Fire:

1.  USB Connection.  Plug your Kindle into the USB slot (small rectangular slot) of your computer using the cable that came with your Kindle (the Kindle Fire doesn’t come standard with the USB cable, so you’ll need to obtain the cable separately, or, use the email option described in #2 below). When you attach your Kindle to your computer via the USB cable, it makes your Kindle appear as a hard drive on your computer. After you purchase the book, from the book’s book page click to download the “Kindle” .MOBI format. Next, navigate to where you see the Kindle show up as a hard drive on your computer. Next, just drop the book’s file (it should end in file name of .mobi) to the Kindle’s “documents” folder. Then disconnect the Kindle from your computer and the book will be ready to read. If you already downloaded the .MOBI file to your computer, here’s a helpful YouTube video that shows how to drag the file from your desktop to the Kindle’s documents folder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UPOgXDYj3M (video not produced by Smashwords).

2.  Email the Ebook to Your Kindle Email Address: For both first generation Kindles and the newest Kindle Fire, you can email your Smashwords .mobi files to your Kindle email address.  Amazon’s support page provides complete details.   To email files to first generation Kindles (Kindles other than the Kindle Fire), click here:   http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200140600.  For Kindle Fire only, Click here for how to set up your free Kindle email address, and how to load ebooks or email ebooks to your Kindle Fire using either the email or USB cable method.

How do I download books to my Kindle from my Mac?
First, go to your web browser’s Preferences and click Downloads.  Make sure to click on the box that directs your browser to ask you where you want to save downloads.  If you don’t do this first step, your files may go to your Downloads folder, and then it will be difficult to move them to your Kindle.  Next, connect your Kindle to your Mac using the USB cable that came with your Kindle.  Next, click to your Smashwords Library to find the link for your purchased book.  Then click to download the .MOBI file.  When your browser asks where you want to save the file, navigate to your Kindle’s “Documents” folder, and drop the file there.  After a few seconds, unplug your Kindle’s USB cable and you’re ready to read.

How do I add an ebook to my Kindle App on Android?
Download to the .mobi version of your ebook to your computer (remember where you put it). Plug your Android device via USB into your computer. On your Android device set it to ‘USB storage’ this may be a pop up query, but you may have to activate it from you device settings. Navigate from your computer to the /kindle folder and copy the .mobi file here. Eject or dismount your phone safely from the computer before disconnecting the cable. And don’t forget to uncheck the ‘USB storage’ button on your Android device (Thanks to Smashwords customer Darold Dickey for contributing this FAQ).

(original source page here)

So now that you know how to get Just Cause onto your Kindle, get out there and get yourself a copy!

Keep Yourself Alive by Queen

Tried to grow a little wiser / Little better ev’ry day

It’s been a real wild ride this year, and I’m writing about it here because that’s the sort of thing you do at the end of a year. It’s a way to reflect upon the past successes (and failures) of the prior year, and to look ahead to what the promise of a new year holds.

I began self-publishing my backlist as ebooks back in January of 2011 with a couple of short stories. Over the course of the year, that library grew to an astonishing 21 pieces: 5 novels, 1 non-fiction, and 15 short stories. I’ve done some free pricing with some and had some success building my sales, to the effect that December was my best month yet.

In April, I attended what I suspect will be my last Pikes Peak Writers Conference. Although the conference has, in years past, brought me some incredibly useful information and contacts, the simple truth is that in the past couple of years, I’ve spent far more time hanging around with my friends there than getting anything useful out of it. That includes time spent pitching to agents and editors, for all my success has come through other avenues. The conference is too expensive a way to spend a weekend hanging around with friends, and it has been my opinion that it’s geared more towards writers at a different part of their career than mine is at this time. I’m not saying it’s a waste of time–quite the contrary, the PPWC has been a real benefit to me earlier in my career. Now, though, not so much. I’ll look back upon the time I spent there fondly, and perhaps I’ll return someday, but my intent would be to do so as a guest speaker instead of an attendee.

My inherited agent (inherited because my prior agent retired) retired at the beginning of this year. I have spent the past year querying a few projects to see if I can find another one. My reason for this is pure business: I’m trying to broaden my market appeal, and to do that, I need to get my work into the hands of people entrenched in the industry. Do I need an agent to be successful? No, not any more than I need a traditional “old-school” publisher.

Literally on my drive home from the Conference in April, I was contacted by a small publisher who was interested in acquiring the Just Cause Universe superhero series. The first book, originally titled Mustang Sally, was released under the title Just Cause right after Thanksgiving of this year. That represents the culmination of a lengthy struggle to write, complete, revise, and sell that book, a journey which began in 2004.

I made a decision to end my long-running webcomic The Adventures of the S-Team this year, and as of today, have only post-production remaining to complete. The strip will end with #1500 in February.

In 2011, I completed the following works:

Novels:

1. Hope and Undead Elvis
2. The Guitarist

Short Stories:

1. Clockwork Chloe
2. Posse
3. Rookie Sensation
4. Footprints in the Butter

Nonfiction:

1. Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

Revised backlist works:

1. Blood on the Ice (novel)
2. Upon a Midnight Clear
3. Graceful Blur
4. The Scent of Rose Petals
5. In His Majesty’s Postal Service
6. Pariah’s Moon (novel)
7. Bread and Circuses
8. Troubleshooters: The Longest Joke Ever Told (novel)
9. The Steel Soldier’s Gambit
10. Last Year’s Hero
11. Bulletproof
12. Young Guns
13. The Mighty Peculiar Incident at Muddy Creek
14. Tuesday Night at Powerman’s
15. The Milkman: SuperSekrit Extra Cheesy Edition (novel)

In 2012, I have more big plans. I’m going to finish Rooftops (2010 NaNoWriMo), Starf*cker (2011 NaNoWriMo), The Oilman’s Daughter (epic steampunk novel with Allison M. Dickson), Champion: A Just Cause Novel (the conclusion of the Mustang Sally Trilogy in the Just Cause Universe), Pariah’s War (sequel to Pariah’s Moon), and an as-yet undetermined NaNoWriMo novel. I will also release a Muddy Creek Tales collection (with 2 new stories), a Harry Blaine collection (also with 2 new stories), and a Tales of the Just Cause Universe (again, with new stories). My publisher will also release more Just Cause Universe novels. It’s going to be an amazing year.

Keep you satisfied

In the end, all I want to do here is satisfy you, my readers, fans, and followers. I hope you’ll continue to travel with me on the exciting journey of the next year.

Free by Freedom Toast (my old band!)

Do you like free stuff? Sure, we all do!

I’m participating in an ebook giveaway that starts right now and runs all the way until the very first second of 2012. That’s right, you’ve got just under two weeks to enter this contest to win a free ebook. To enter is very simple:

1. Go to this website: http://giveawaychristmas.wordpress.com/

2. Decide which of the eight ebooks you want to enter to win (you can enter up to once for every ebook!).

3. Facebook the contest, Tweet it, Google+ it, or blog it.

4. Post a comment on the original post how you promoted it, along with other applicable information.

5. Wait to see if you win! No, Ed McMahon won’t show up at your door with a big huge check and a camera crew, but you may get at least one free ebook out of it!

With entry requirements that simple, there’s no reason  you can’t (or shouldn’t) enter eight times. Every tweet/facebook link/Google+ link/blog link helps the eight authors (including me!) to gain more exposure for our work. I’m promoting my crossover Western/High Fantasy novel Pariah’s Moon, and this is a great opportunity for you to get to read it for nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Finding My Way by Rush

I’m comin’ out to find you

JUST CAUSE is now out for sale, and I’m doing my darndest to get everyone on the Internet to buy at least one copy. Lofty goal? Maybe, but then, so is getting a book published. Here’s the thing: New Babel Books has signed me for the first four books of the Just Cause Universe series, and I have more finished and even more planned. If you want to get to read them all, we need to get the word out across the world. Send out the signal. Shout it from the mountaintops and broadcast it on a carrier wave to stretch beyond the Matrix into the world of the Real.

Here’s how you can help.

Source: fotopedia.com

I’m announcing the commencement of the 2011-2012 JUST CAUSE LIVE Tour, a fully-interactive, fully-supported tour coming soon to a blog near you. No opening act. Just me, my book, and your blog. That’s right, if you have a blog, I’d love to guest post for you. I will tailor the show to your readers (within limits, of course. If you have a knitting blog, I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you. Cat blogs are a possibility though.). I will do a guest post, I will participate in interviews (text or podcast).

I will entertain you.

All I ask is some support on your end. An announcement about the book. A link to the sales page. More avenues to other bloggers. You can do that, can’t you? Everyone who has a blog is looking for content, and I’m here to offer some to you. Let’s make this tour happen in a big way. Let’s make JUST CAUSE a bestseller and give New Babel even more incentives to keep the series alive.

Want to participate? Email me.

Here’s a new free short story, just in time for Christmas. Available from Smashwords for every major ereader platform!

It was “over,” which the book isn’t, but it took me over 50,000 words for the eighth consecutive year.

Congratulations to me!