Should FREE Books get good reviews?

I saw this on one of Amazon's Discussion boards yesterday.  YES they should get reviews, but people need to be honest in reviewing the books.  If the book engaged you, was interesting, if you enjoyed it, then write a good, warm, glowing review of the book.  If on the other hand the book was unmitigated crap and even though it was free you felt it was an utter waste of your time and you couldn't get past the third chapter, then go back to where you got it and review it honestly.  If I get a bad review I am going to pay attention to that and spend more time working on perfecting my craft of writing, editing, and polishing the next book to make it better.  I do that anyway, because I want to be a Great Writer.  I want the day to come where Agents are calling me...

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Cold Enough ?

Have you ever heard the expression? "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass Monkey." It is a Nautical expression from back in the days when they used cannons that fired solid round metal cannon balls.  In order to keep the balls from rolling around the deck and breaking peoples ankles, they would tack a brass ring to the deck which was called a 'Monkey'.  When it would get really cold the monkey would shrink (Physics).  The monkey was big enough to hold three cannon balls inside it and they could stack a fourth on top of the three so there would be four cannon balls beside each cannon, ready to go all the time.  When the monkey shrunk the three balls on the bottom would slip out dropping the fourth and you would have loose cannon balls rolling around the deck. ...

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FREE NUDE PICTURES

This is an experiment with how search engines and blogs work.  I have an average of two page views a day and I have one follower, Phillip Woody, my best friend and most faithful fan of my work.  He gets alerted every time I post a blog because he is signed up as a follower and then I am sure he checks to see what I may be blogging about today.  People who know me personally know that I am given to Rants (Ranting and Raving) about some new thing that I have some strong opinion about.  My daughter enjoys bringing up particular subject matter just to throw me into a rant so she watch for her personal enjoyment.  Yet I get distracted again. The Experiment!  I have had a few spikes in views to my blog over the last month but have no idea what caused them.  I...

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Priceing your Masterpiece

What to Charge for your Masterpiece!It seems to me that too many people are way to desperate to be noticed.  The pricing of E-books at 99 cents or worse for free is not helping the e-publishing business, in my opinion. Established Authors are selling routinely on Amazon dot com at $9.99.  I think that is extremely reasonable.  A) A new Hard cover book is going to run you from $12.00 - $30.00 on the average.B) A paperback book usually runs $5.99 to $9.99 on the average. I believe that E-books should be substantially less than traditional books, especially since there are no real materials being consumed to make the book available and delivered to the customer.  On the flip side of that,  a established author with a loyal following can command a higher price for their...

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Publishing Revolution

If you go back several hundred years ago, and you wanted a book you would a) have to write it or b) go to a bookseller and buy a hand written copy of a book.  Scribes would work copying books their entire lives, this is a profession that dates way back. Then along came the printing press in it's various forms.  Today we are seeing a revolution in publishing that has not been seen since the first days of printing.  Between the printing press, and pioneers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and countless others who inspired and opened up avenues for the printed words and the spreading of ideas, thoughts and opinions faster than ever before in history. Since the early days of writing up to the advent of the computers and the Internet the publishing industry grew and flourished...

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A Book Club

I belong to a book club and it is fantastic.  There are seven of us, who meet once a month to discuss the current book we have decided to read.  When we meet, we discuss different aspects of the book.  We decide on future books for upcoming months, and decide on the dates we will meet. 1.  Keep your group small and Manageable. 2.  Keep it simple.  The the book.  Pick another book.  Decide on next meeting day. 3.  Be open and diplomatic about the choices of books you choose to read. Over the years we have hit upon some real gems and discovered some very talented authors. The only draw back I have found is once you have read several awesome books in a row, it is hard for average books to measure to what you have been reading. I am toying around...

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Update

E-Published on Amazon - showed up Saturday, had to make minor changes and re-submit, fixed version showed up Monday. Finally heard back on Manual Review from Smashwords. Cover art needed cropped and re downloaded. Had to take the quotes off from around Title. Had to take out indents and use center function on cover page. Some what minor changes compared to all that could have been wrong with it.  I have to wait for it to be reconverted and then re-submit to manual review and wait again. Still way faster than traditional publishing.  With traditional publishing I would be fighting with query letters and trying to figure out which agents trash cans I want to line those with. Since I began trying to build a social network to spread the word that I wrote a book and asking people to...

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Published on Amazon dot com

My book is on Amazon dot com at the follow address http://www.amazon.com/Search for Whisper by Thomas Wilson It comes up displaying: By Thomas Wilson and Lavon Blake, because I listed Lavon Blake as my editor.  Also the cover art looks stretched and too long even though I made it exactly to Amazon's criteria of 500x1200 pixels.  Next time I will use the same Cover Art format I used for Smashwords.  The important thing is it isn't pretty or perfect but it is out there for the world to see, try, download, read and hopefully begin a loyal following.  I need to see if I can adjust the cover art and get my editors name off the: By part without totally un-publishing and republishing the book. Again this is a process, and I am learning.  Not the most exciting Blog Post in...

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I Hate Nicholas Sparks

I am part of the greatest book club ever!  We all bring up ideas for interesting books to read and then we decide as a group what books we will read and then discuss for upcoming months.  If you love to read and you're not in a book club I highly suggest you find one or create one.  One of the benefits in being part of a book club is you will be introduced to books you would never normally pick up and read.  The book club got me to read my first Nicholas Sparks book, "True Believer", which honestly I thought was a fantastic book.  I really enjoyed it.  When I found out there was a sequel to it, "At First Sight", I rushed right out and picked it up.  I finished the book on a Friday and had the feeling of just losing a loved one in a car accident right in front...

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Downloaded "Whisper" to Amazon

Ok, so I am slow.  I never claimed to be the sharpest crayon in the box, and I am not.  I published my first novel on Smashwords dot com almost two weeks ago.  I thought it would end up on Amazon's web site along with the other places it will eventually end up on once it gets past the Manual Review and hopefully accepted into their Premium Catalog.  Well, I was mistaken.  It took a while reading through the questions and answers section on their site to figure out what people (other authors) are doing is publishing on Amazon and on Smashwords. So after this realization hit me midway through yesterday, last night when I got home I took the Smashwords stuff off my cover art, re-sized it to Amazons specifications.  Took the Smashwords stuff off of the copyright page,...

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Dealing With Things

This will be a short Post, about a trait I hope to instill to my followers. Dealing with things . . .  I see too often people avoiding problems, side stepping, procrastinating, deferring, robbing Peter to pay Paul.  It comes in as many forms as excuses.  I learned sometime ago to handle things as they arrive.  Solve problems as they present themselves.  Eventually even be pro-active and look for problems before they rear their heads and take action to deal with them on your terms, in your time.  Run your life, don't let it run you. The people who avoid problems don't realize that they will still be there until you deal with them.  The people who avoid problems will stumble or get caught on a problem and the days, weeks, and months of avoided problems...

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Back to Normal

I have to admit I was on about a week and a half natural high after publishing my first book.  The last time I had such an extended feeling of elation such as that was the week after white water rafted the Royal Gorge in Colorado.  The we had the blizzard of 2011, OK, survived it, and now it is back to normal.  The elation is gone and it is back to work moving tires during the day and editing or writing in the evenings. I can't imagine what it must be like if I had not had the option of E-publishing.  If I was stuck now writing query letters to agents trying to get noticed in the flood of want to be published writers.  Even being published I have had 11 partial downloads of my book, 20 copies downloaded that I gave away to get people to read my work and help spread...

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More than Plot

How you tell it.A story is not so much what you tell as it is how you tell it.  Obviously there is a huge difference between a story and a good story.  Then once in a while you run across the elusive great story.  There are many good stories out there that have the potential of sliding over to the category of a great story just by rearranging how the story is told.   As I am not an expert at writing great stories yet, I know one when I am reading one.  Elements of the Great Story.1.  Incredible Plot – good planning and execution from beginning to end with all loose ends tied up by the ending.2.  Mini climaxes timed to coincide with the breaks in the story, right at the end of chapters so you don't want to stop at the end of this chapter but keep going. ...

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Blizzard Hits Midwest

Snow DayI have worked for Community Wholesale Tire for nineteen and a half years and I can count on two hands how many times we have cancelled routes due to weather.  Today we are making history because we are essentially shut down due to a blizzard!  We will be closed Wednesday February 2, 2011 because of snow, all routes cancelled.  ME and a few of the hard core regulars of Community Tire – Kansas City will come in tomorrow and finish clearing the loading dock to get ready for Thursday, and maybe set some racks up that we have been waiting on to get ahead of the ball.  I will get some time to work on editing and writing.  I wanted to say a word about promoting.  My wife was watching a show on television with some doctors on it who were commenting on the crazy...

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