Today may be an important one for the novel – we got two reader reviews on Amazon, both positive 4-star recommendations. One also posted on GoodReads, for additional exposure.
While the editorial reviews from IndieReader and Kirkus have been tremendously affirming for us, I can’t say they’ve really moved the needle yet in terms of sales. I think they help the book have some credibility, but credibility is nothing without visibility, and in this blizzard of books we joined by direct-publishing, visibility is the real magic trick.
My co-author signed us up with Story Cartel, which is essentially a virtual library where readers can download free books provided that they write reviews that then post to Amazon. They put a disclaimer in the reviews that they received the book for free in exchange for an honest response, and (as long as they enjoy the book), everyone gets something good out of it. Story Cartel only makes the book available for a limited time, which alleviates fears that everyone will just take the freebie rather than buy it. I’m not a registered reader, but it appears that readers accumulate credits by recommending the book within their network as well.
So that was the source of today’s new reviews. I have been scouring the web for book bloggers and making individual approaches, and we’re going to get a couple of reviews out of that as well, but it was fairly painstaking work and I can’t imagine most authors will know how to undertake it. I hope more services like Story Cartel (which doesn’t seem to require a lot of labor to sustain) come into the ecosystem.
This marks the very small beginning of the world outside our friends and family having the chance to see and consider the book. For the first time, we could sell a couple of copies to strangers. At least a few people are going to see it based on today’s reviews, they’ll have the strong motivation of a recommendation from a friend, those editorial reviews will back up that recommendation, and the damn thing is just so affordable…
This could work.