The Journal of Spartan_Warrior

[jennypenny]

Are people not allowed to be offended or leave a negative review? I agree that leaving a negative review for a book you haven't read is fraudulent and should be pulled. I don't understand why it's a surprise that a book cover with a naked woman holding a gun might turn someone off, or that a book that solely uses male pronouns and examples might tick off a feminist or two. That doesn't mean an author has to be PC or change their writing style, but they shouldn't be naive. It's unrealistic (and a little arrogant) for an author to think that readers should conform to the author's standards of taste or decency.

Pick your audience, write and market to them, and accept that your writing--if it has any depth or originality to it at all--will turn some people off.

[Chad]

There is a creative danger in paying attention to everyone. This is what happened to the major networks. They try to meet everyone's needs and fail to meet anyone's needs. You get "Revolution" instead of the "Walking Dead." Both post-apocalyptic, but one fails to transport the viewer to a new time and place.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[jacob]

@jp - Well, amazon clearly allows people to be offended and leave negative reviews using whatever motivation suits their fancy. My problem with some of this is that some of these "reviews" aren't exactly reviews but rather serve as a trolling platform for some people.

My issue is not with negative reviews but rather the unintended side-effects of allowing a free for all comment behavior, namely that some negative statements aren't even reviews yet still has the effect of being treated as such. It's similar to grafitti. Sure, people can tag walls with their political statements, but I'd rather not have them written on my house.

I think it's unlikely that a professional reviewer will say something like "I only read the first 10 pages. This book contains nothing new ... [and then go onto an Bush/Obama-rant or something else that's extremely tangentially related to the book]". However, such behavior is perfectly acceptable in the amazon review space. And it influences decisions!

Currently, there's no way for an author to point out whether "reviews" are actual reviews or whether they're simply unrelated comments to the content which also happens to hurt sales.

As I mentioned above, this can disproportionally hurt authors because many book buyers only count the number of stars without reading the actual review and because many also only pay attention to the last couple of reviews. This tendency is very much a liability of a crowd-sourced review system.

In other words, these statements have a far greater influence than they warrant. If a book has 100 five star reviews and 1 one-star review, you can be sure that that 1-star review will be read almost as much as the other hundred reviews combined. Fair and balanced

Authors should, therefore, clearly take the existence of this kind of carpet bombing behavior into account. Whether to act on is, I guess, is similar to simply seeing it as the "cost of doing business". These people are out there. Authors will run into them. An analogy is to think of them as viruses. They infect the book and makes it sick. If they arrive before the book has built a strong immune system as a result of accurate reviews, they can absolutely kill a book. What I'm saying that maybe there's no cure for this disease, but that its existence should definitely be taken into account.

The problem is not that controversial books are bound to attract attention and a polarized review distribution. That's all fine and if only it was so well.

The problem is that a minority of people are trolling the review space for their own personal reasons(*) and assert an undue influence.

(*) Internet trolls score high on narcissism and sadism---yes, of course psychologists have studied this. "Burning down the barn" covers both. It gets them attention and it hurts someone else. Try clicking on "see other reviews" at one point. They'll either have no other reviews, or they'll have a stream of hatchet jobs.

I think amazon realizes that part of their business strength is that people still somewhat thrust reviews. If they lose that thrust, people might stop buying stuff. This is why amazon is policing the review space. In my opinion, they're not doing a sufficiently good job at it though.

@SW - Another thing to consider is that negative reviews can actually be helpful in some aspects. In particular, for the demographics who actually read the reviews rather than just check average number of stars and the most recent review, a collection of practically exclusively poorly argumented low-star reviews can actually work strengthen your side by making the counter-argument look weak. E.g. if the biggest critique is that I use words like "thus" and math equations, maybe it's not that bad. Heck, some even consider those a bonus ;-P

I think createspace will allow you to do whatever you want. Officially, you can correct typos, etc. without getting a new ISBN since it's technically still the same book. However, you would not be able [allowed] to rewrite sentences or add sentences since that would cause it to be a different book. I'm not sure whether changing the cover counts as a change.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[jennypenny]

I'm glad the discussion has turned back to the Book 1 cover, because I've pretty much decided I'm "re-releasing" Book 1, primarily to change the cover (and to make exactly two small typographical/typesetting corrections that bother me when I read the paperback). I think CreateSpace will allow me to do this without a whole new ISBN, but we'll see. Either way, the eBook now features the new cover (see below).
...
My one concession toward making it less "offensive" was to make the woman's image more of a silhouette. Going for something reminiscent of a James Bond movie intro. (Though the lack of contrast now makes me concerned about the clarity of the image in thumbnail. It's always something.)

I wouldn't have used that concept if I didn't think it's appropriate for the story (I mean--spoiler alert--the scene is pretty much pulled from the book). I also think it's mostly inoffensive to the intended audience*, but the fact is I don't know. I haven't gotten substantive feedback on the cover. No one has actually told me that it's offensive, nor has anyone told me that it's amazing or swayed their decision to buy. IMO, when an author has conflicting input on something (or no input), the tie should go to the author--and I do it the way I like it.

You don't have to change anything. That wasn't the point I was trying to make. You just have to accept that if you write anything provocative at all (or use provocative artwork or marketing), you will inevitably get some negative feedback. You can't please everyone. I just think authors shouldn't try to have it both ways. An author can either tone down the work to appeal to as many readers as possible (trying not to offend anyone), or they can write with conviction and accept that their work won't appeal to everyone.

I can't find the clip, but I remember a great interview with Quentin Tarantino where he talks about this. He said he's always surprised that people are offended by his work because he only makes violent movies that are designed to offend. Why do people expect something different?


@jacob--Would you be happier if Amazon referred to them as "comments" instead of "reviews"?

I don't get what you mean by "whatever motivation suits their fancy." Reviews are subjective, not objective. We all see things through our own lens based upon personal experience. Why are some motivations legitimate and others not, assuming they read the book? I chose not to mention your language choices because my motivation at the time was to promote your ideas and the book. If I didn't have a personal interest, I would definitely have pointed out the language in my review as a caveat to women who are easily offended by such language. Would you really consider that trolling? Isn't it better if women who would be turned off by terms like "renaissance man" didn't buy the book?

We should stop. We're derailing Spartan's journal and we've been down this road before.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[Spartan_Warrior]

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[llorona]

I'm not sure if this will make you feel better or worse, but that's virtually the same plot for every single Lifetime Television for Women movie.

Regardless, good for you for pursuing your dream.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[Spartan_Warrior]

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[Spartan_Warrior]

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[steveo73]

Pushing out the book that quick is impressive. Well done.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[spoonman]

SW, I very much envy you for having the writing knack. One day I'll give writing a try, but I fear the words will come out painfully like kidney stones.

I should note that I've had 15 years of experience writing scientific papers and lengthy technical reports. But that's very different from writing an engaging science fiction story.

[steveo73]

Back to the grind.

I like this comment. I think that these types of beliefs keep me on track.

[Spartan_Warrior]

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[Ego]

I want to read a book about a frustrated government employee who gets pissed off when his girlfriend's review of his book gets deleted from Amazon so he researches all the ways someone might game Amazon's system, then ghost-writes a book with Amazon manipulation by a government employee as its main theme.

The government employee is a fraud investigator and the members of his departmental book club - whom he loathes - become unwitting accomplices and scapegoats. Thanks to Amazon manipulation, the ghost-written book is a huge success but the money appears to pass through accounts controlled by his evil supervisor who also happens to be an aspiring author and the organizer of the book-club. The frustrated government employee quietly retires to write while evil-supervisor takes the blame.

Spartan with the Dragon Tattoo.

[jacob]

5-10/day is pretty good as is holding #15 in some niche area. Getting discovered takes time (years!!) as this can attest to: http://www.amazon.com/Kurt-Vonnegut-Let ... 0385343752

While it's cool to have reviews, be very very careful about soliciting them lest you trigger some crude algo. Don't count on the human drones setting things straight once triggered. Let reviews come organically. In my (and other's) experience, about 1% of people leave reviews on amazon, so if you have 5 reviews, it means some 500 people actually read your book. Seeing that it's now possible to add stars without adding words, I can also say that people who hate your book will nearly always write a reviews whereas only half of the people who love your book will do so. Hence, things are often better than they look. Overall, I suggest doing better than me when it comes to paying attention to reviews. I suspect it's better if you mostly ignore them much like you've come to ignore your net worth as the "solution" to "salvation". Writing because you're internally driven to do so is the best state to be in by far. Let sales and reviews be a side-effect. Easy to say.---I find it hard to do.

Suggestion: I find that my best reviews---best in the qualitative sense in terms of "getting it" as well as in the quantitative sense in terms of eyeballs---come from fellow bloggers. Have you considered a campaign like that? Reaching out to similar writers with a "free book for a review" strategy?

PS: I can certainly provide some kind of platform for ERE/fight-the-system themed books like Happiness.

[Tyler9000]

My answer to "What are you going to do about it?" has gone from "early retirement" to "support myself as a writer". Being FI through investments has taken a backseat, little more than a safety net.

On the whole, I think this is a healthier mindset. Writing is a much easier goal to literally work toward, if nothing else. On the other hand, there are days when it's even more disheartening.

I wholeheartedly agree that shifting happiness away from investing is a positive thing. But supporting yourself as a writer is still market based. It's just the fiction market vs the financial market. Because success is not wholly in your control, the fear and frustration is natural.

Are there any activities that you'd happily do for free and are uncoupled entirely from the actions of others? I'd personally recommend mixing in a few of those every once in a while as an alternative stress reliever. I'd hate for you to wear out your fun new activity too quickly by putting too much pressure on yourself. You're doing great. Enjoy it!