Category Archives: up for discussion

INDIE AUTHORS OF THE WORLD, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS (part 2)!

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stop-sign

Late last year, I found myself so annoyed at authors who fill the synopsis section of their book’s description with so much praise I can’t decipher what the book is actually about that I wrote a whole post about it. You can read it here.

This morning I had a similar experience, leading me to a similar response. I’ll start with a couple screenshots, see if you can guess my complaint by the common denominator.

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Did you figure it out? Look authors, I realize Amazon stopped using tags and I realize that tags were a useful way to find books, as well as something authors could manipulate and feel like they were doing something significant to work their books up the recommendation chain. I get it, I do. I even tried it once when I was new. But tags do not belong in titles! (This is just my opinion, of course, but I’m pretty firm in it.)

I find it especially irritating in cases like the first and last examples above, when at least one word of each of the tags in included in the title itself. This means that anyone searching those words would get the book even without the tags. (And as an aside, I could write another whole rant on mixing incompatible genres, like in that 3rd example. How can you have a YA, threesome erotic novel? You shouldn’t be able to? It goes against what it means to be YA.)

Let me break this down for you, from a reader’s perspective. I’m scrolling through the list of millions of books available to me as a reader, yes? I’m glancing at covers and titles to see what interests me. If I come across Fantasy: Immortaland: The Greatest Fantasy Kingdom To Exist And That Will Ever Exist (Fantasy Story, Epic Fantasy, Magic Kingdom, Fantasy Adventure) I have to stop and pick through all those extraneous word to find the actual title. Do you know what my reaction to this is? ‘That’s too much trouble’ and I scroll right by. That’s right. This practice is losing you sales in a very real way.

What’s more, it looks desperate. It says to me that this author is so desperate to be noticed they’re attempting to rig the system. Yes, I know how hard it is to be noticed, but getting noticed for trying to get noticed is a little pitiful.

Then there is the fact that sites like Goodreads pull the book’s details from Amazon and thus indiscriminately pull the data from the title line, along with all those tags, into their metadata where it really is useless.

And what if I’m the sort who likes to hide my kinky side? I don’t necessarily want that kink readily apparent in the title. Just because my seven-year-old sees me reading a book called Strictly Business doesn’t mean I want to yet explain what Strictly Business: Gay, M/M, BDSM, Dom/sub, billionaire, CEO, taboo (Courtland Chronicles series Book 2) means. The same argument could be made for someone reading outside their religion, or above their age limit, or in a professional setting, etc.

It’s my further understanding that this is an outdated mode of getting your book found in the first place. According to a 2009 post (that’s right six years old) Google no longer uses metatag keywords in their searches at all.  

And you can guarantee that if Google has given it up the rest of the Web isn’t far behind. After all, there’s surely a reason Amazon removed the tagging option in the first place.

So, this practice of obscuring your title with tags annoys readers (at least this reader), means some kinky readers have to avoid your books, looks ridiculous, and probably doesn’t really do much. So, I’d be interested in hearing why authors and publishers seem to be ramping up the use of the practice. The five examples I used above took me mere moments to find and I could pull dozens more.

How about this one:

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According to the cover, the title of the book is The Barony Letter and the series name is Liath. (You might be tempted to think it’s the other-way around, due to which is most prominently displayed, but you’d apparently be wrong. I was.) But the author has chosen to put the tag Historical Romance, before the actual title, as if the book is called Historical Romance: Liath: The Barony Letter. Sorry, I have no desire to read anything so clumsily titled, or any book that I have to work so hard to figure out the basic information of, for that matter.

Here’s more: HISTORICAL ROMANCE: The Marriage Was Not The Best Suited For Our Love HISTORICAL ROMANCE Short Story (Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Historical Romance … Romance books, Historical Romance Novel), Mystery: Whispers of Silence (Mystery Books, Mystery Romance Novels, Thriller Romance, Mystery Romance Books, Mystery Romance Series), Ancient Egypt: Discover the Fascinating World of Ancient Egyptian History, Myths, Pyramids and More: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Egypt Fiction, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Egyptian History, Egypt, A Firm Lesson Learned (Hot Neighbor, Alpha Male, Gay M/M Man Next Door, Mind Control Paranormal)

Is it starting to look like gobbledygook yet? I know I can’t tease out the titles from all that other nonsense. (For the record, that’s four books in the paragraph above.) And I can’t even blame it on one author or publisher. These are mostly all different writers crossing genres from gay erotica to mysteries to non-fiction. Though, it does seem most common in the romance & erotic genres.

So, from one serious, several-hundred-books-a-year reader, please authors, PLEASE, stop doing this. It drives me batty and puts me off your books. If you really want that information available to readers, put it in the synopsis. That’s what it’s there for.

A small book promotion(ish) opportunity available to anyone interested

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Little Free Library

In my front yard, boarding the road, I have two large trees. They’re beautiful sweet-gums (we just won’t speak of the endless time I spend raking up artillery-worthy spiky balls) and for years I have looked at these trees and thought one of them would be perfect to mount a Little Free Library on.

WheeeeThe problem is that I’m not really the crafty type and, though I know I can buy a LFL for a couple hundred bucks, I’d still need to mount it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not helpless. I could manage it, but it would be inelegantly done, to say the least.

Even if I involved the husband, it wouldn’t be much better. He doesn’t work with wood. Need a bicycle frame welded into perfection? He’s your man. So, while he could certainly make me a mount, it would probably weigh more than the LFL, including all the books. (Plus, steel isn’t exactly cheap!)

OK, I probably won't get the fancy, super expensive one, but a girl can dream.

OK, I probably won’t get the fancy, super expensive one, but a girl can dream.

But I see an opportunity in the future. The husband’s family is coming to visit early this summer and his uncle, though now retired, is a builder. I’ll have my LFL this summer. <Insert wild applause here.> That means it’s time to prepare.

This brings me to the opportunity I suggested in the title. The whole idea of a LFL is that friends and neighbors borrow regularly, always taking one book and leaving another. As an example, below is a short film from British Columbia in which the library’s steward states it rotates roughly 100 books a week, in the busy season. I’m guessing ‘the busy season’ means spring and summer.

My road isn’t quite as busy as the one in the video, so I don’t anticipate quite that much traffic.  Though I am close to a main road and there are a number of dog walkers, so you never know. But I intend to ensure that there is at least one indie/sp book in it at all times and I’m open to authors sending me a copy of their book to be included.

Now, I can’t guarantee that this will result in a review for those authors who take me up on this offer and, since I don’t want to make this an indie LFL, I won’t be putting them all out at once. Therefore, it could take a while for your book to make it into the LFL, but it will get a book out there and into circulation. Which you have to admit is something.

If you’re interested in sending a book, email me at LFL@sadieforsythe dot com. I would suggest only stand alones or first in series, please. Unless you and your series are particularly well known, I can’t imagine a second or third book in a series no one knows circulating well.

On a side note, whether you’re interested in my future LFL or not, the LFL movement is a worthy one. Until May 21st they are running a Kickstarter to earn money to post libraries and books in book-deprived neighborhoods. Why not check it out?

Have questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line. I’m open to discussion and/or suggestions.

Totally petty, personal book-irritant of the day

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please-just-stop--1

Ok, I’m gonna admit upfront that I’m being ridiculous. Novels are fiction, so there is absolutely no reason for this to annoy me as much as it does. But, as is often the case when you encounter something repeatedly, it simply does. What’s more, once it’s sneaks into your (or my) awareness you start to see it everywhere.

Bottled-Water-2What is it that I’m seeing on the pages of so many books that I feel compelled to write a whole blog post to complain about it? Characters that get thirsty and then go to the fridge to grab a bottle of water.

I know, you’re probably confused. It’s such a small thing. But it has started to feel like every book I read lately, that’s set in any sort of contemporary setting—be it paranormal, urban fantasy, romance, comedy, etc—has at least one scene when someone grabs a bottle of water. But why bottled water?

Sure, plenty of real-world people drink bottled water; some might even keep it stocked in the fridge at all times. But I’d be willing to assert it’s far more common for thirsty people in their own home to drink water from a tap, a refrigerator filter or Brita or PUR type container. In other words, get a glass of water. How many of us really always drink bottled water at home?

I keep imagining these imaginary characters filling their imaginary land fills with billions of imaginary plastic bottles (or worse, their imaginary oceans). I want to run in and give them an imaginary Nalgene and scream, “It’s reusable.”

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You see this on television too, but I’m willing to excuse it on set. I realise a sink would require plumbing, which most sets don’t have. Similarly, I suppose an author could argue that getting a glass of water, as opposed to a bottle, requires a character know where the glasses are and then to get one before filling it. It takes more words, more description, sure. But if that’s really the reason, it’s just plain laziness.

With some places banning the disposable plastic bottle, I’d like to see it go the way of the cigarette. Few newly written characters smoke. It’s just not cool anymore. Could we perhaps see fictional characters becoming environmentally aware and forgoing the Evian anytime soon? I sure would hope so.

greenberg21