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I want five bad reviews this summer

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Five bad reviews of either of my books from people I don’t know. That’s my goal for this summer. I told my husband this last week and he looked at me as if I’d sprouted an arm from the top of my head.

I do have a good reason for wanting five bad reviews: if I don’t get any bad reviews, not enough people are reading the book.

This doesn’t mean I’m eager to read a bad review of The Eagle and The Arrow. And it doesn’t mean that I want more terrible reviews than good ones. No one likes a bad review. But no bad reviews are almost as bad as no good reviews, I think, because that means only my friends are reading it. Though I treasure my friends and want them to read my work, I also want to reach readers of all kinds.

And if I reach a wide enough group of readers, I will find the haters. Not everyone is going to love my work, I know this. I mean, look at Amazon. There are people, alive and dead, who hate The Great Gatsby, Pride & Prejudice and The Fellowship of the Ring, so there are definitely people around who will hate my work. This summer, I want to get my book into enough hands that I find some of them.

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Give it away, give it away, give it away now.

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Beware The Hawk novellaWow. The Goodreads book giveaway is no joke.

Today I launched my very first giveaway with the site, the first of several giveaways of Beware the Hawk I’m doing to lead up to the release of The Eagle and the Arrow next month.

My giveaway has been for one morning and already it’s been requested by several people. I’ve been checking back every hour like the obsessive person that I am, and it’s been kind of a thrill to watch people participating. Some people have added my book to their shelves. Some people have requested the giveaway. This is totally worth all the research, hair-pulling and cursing at the Internet I did on Friday when I tried to set up this giveaway.

I decided to try a series of giveaways after being prompted by other writers, every how-to-be-an-author-in-2013 blog post ever written and Goodreads itself. It was something I avoided last year, when BTH came out, because at first BTH was an e-book only (you can only give away physical books over Goodreads) and later, despite the advice of publishing friends, I was wary of giving away anything.

You know what? I really wish I tried the giveaway earlier. It’s a way to reach readers who a) I don’t know and b) don’t live near me. Even if the winner doesn’t read the book, or doesn’t like it, I will have still connected with a lot of readers who would be otherwise unavailable to me.

I’m pretty excited about all these readers. In fact, I’m excited about the series of giveaways as well. I’ll be doing one this week, next week and the week after, and then I will do some with the new book as well.

In the meantime, I’m working on some other goodness and I hope to post about that soon.

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Do you know of a great book reviewer? I want to know.

Eagle & The ArrowThis is a crowd-sourcing kind of post. I want you guys to tell me where to send my book.

Yesterday I started sending review copies of The Eagle & The Arrow to a few fantastic book reviewers with whom I have relationships, and also to an elite group of super-readers. (I like to call them The Resistance. Because why not.)

But now it’s time to open things up and start sending review e-copies of my book to reviewers I don’t know. So I thought I’d open this up here: Do you know of, or really like a book review site to which I should be sending The Eagle & The Arrow? Or are you a book reviewer (for this effort, I’m looking for people who write reviews for either book review sites, blogs or publications)? 

Let me know. Leave a comment with the name of the site or shoot me an email or tweet me or Facebook message me and tell me where you think I should send my review copies. Or fill out this form (I’m all about options):

You send me a recommendation and I will send an e-book galley to that site. I will write them a note and mention you by name and tell them that you loved them so much that you recommended them to me.

So tell me, who should I be emailing? I want to know.

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In which I beg for stars.

Not stars, as in masses of incandescent gases. Stars as in Amazon and Goodreads reviews.

Recently I’ve heard from a few fellow authors who have asked me and other readers to post reviews to the Internet. It struck me that I should probably be doing that, rather than just raving to them privately. Also, it struck me that I should ask my readers to do the same.

So, if you’ve read Beware the Hawk and liked it* please consider heading on over to my Amazon and Goodreads pages and rating it. Or even write a review. Especially write a review. My editor and publisher** at Vagabondage Press would love that, and I would too.

 

*or even if you didn’t. As a journalist, I’m a fan of free speech. Even though some free speech makes me cry.
** or as I like to think of them, the “evil overladies.”

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Book update.

Beware The Hawk novellaHello folks. Just a brief Sunday post to let you all know that Vagabondage Press has a book page up now for my novella Beware the Hawk.

Here it is!

The page is up, but orders won’t be taken until Jan. 17. The publishers and I are reaching out to book bloggers now, and I’m trying to set up a blog tour.

I also want to thank everyone for the incredible amount of support I’ve been getting.  I’ve gotten shout-outs on people’s blogs and insane amounts of congratulations, people have liked my Facebook fan page. I’ve heard from a couple of reviewers. Someone even nominated me for a blog award. Someone else  promised me a glowing five star review on Amazon* without even having read the book. So generous. Thank you guys so much for all of your support so far. I’ve been blown away by all of your kind words. I was very nervous about promoting this book a week ago but you have set my mind at ease.

Okay – that’s it for now. Tomorrow I promise to return to writing confessionals and posts about ninjas, dwarf-maidens and my biological clock.

*I cannot tell a lie. I will not say no to a five-star review on Amazon. But I am told – by those who know such things – that reviews on Goodreads are taken more seriously by the reading public. That’s where the bookworms gather, which makes me feel a little left out, since I don’t have an account there.

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