Bad Reviews

I have not (yet) had a bad review. I like to think that if/when it happens, I'll be mature and professional enough not to argue with the reviewer. Of course I'll probably grumble to myself about it, but I pray that I wouldn't embarrass myself by discrediting someone's valid opinion. In writing you learn that a critique is a gift -- even if it doesn't feel that way at the time.

I have written negative reviews (under a different name) and had people jump down my throat. My comments were never confrontational, just pointing out my experiences with a book. I do read indie authors. Because of the wild price ranges, I also read the reviews and the sample before buying (most of the time). Reviews effect my opinion.  These books call me to review even more than the ones I loved. Like a higher power is calling on me to state the truth to the innocent readers about to select "Buy now with 1-click." Now that I'm an indie author, I'm a little wary of giving negative feedback. What if those authors get vindictive? I've seen it happen in comments -- why not just hunt down my book and give it a bad review out of spite?

That said, I would welcome a negative review if it was sincere vs. malicious. It would tell me 1) people are reading my book and 2)my writing elicited an emotional response. To me that's a win/win. 1 star? I'd be surprised. But even if that was the case, my average would just appear more realistic. Nothing but glowing reviews tells me that the only people reviewing the book are friends of the author (I mean, seriously, if the books is that epic, why self-publish?). Of course I asked some acquaintances from within the online writing community to read and post a review. I did not stipulate that it had to be 5 stars, but I imagine they were kinder than they would have been if they were reviewing a complete stranger. Then again, if they want their reviews taken seriously they should be honest.

I started writing this series of Silk and Stone novellas with the intention of self publishing from the get go. They're novellas and could never be stand alone books. They are, however, perfect little $0.99 reads. If you read my story, write me a review. I'm a big girl and can take it.

Formatting is a Bitch

So I uploaded my manuscript to Amazon a few days back. Everything was awesome until it came to preview the document. There was general funkiness at a few places where there were short dialogue paragraphs. What did I do wrong?

I searched and read through threads in forums and found out this is common. I turned on my formating to view where paragraphs breaks happened, where indenting was autoformat and where it was tabbed. Everything good? Nope. Reading more advice I saved it as a Pdf. Big mistake. More reading, saved as Html. Indent problem was fixed, but the font was changed and really was not friendly on the eyes and there were issues with spacing between the copyright info and such.

So, more searches and more advice. I pat my head and rubbed my tummy (yes, I have that skill). I said the alphabet backwards from W to C and then lit some red candles in the western window of my home. Eventually I turned everything over to my hunk of male love because I was going crazy. 47 attempts later it is in reasonable shape. He ended up having rewrite html code, something outside of my scope of skill and interest.

I could have just left it as it was, but it takes away from the professionalism from the read. With the lack of controls in self publishing, it is uber important to me to do this right. This is the start of my name branding and I don't want it to suck because of formatting (if it sucks because it's a bad story, that's another problem). I've read ebooks that had bizarre formatting and use of italics that tore me out of the moment. I don't want that to happen to my readers.

Click on the my book cover link at the top of the page and check out my formatting to give your opinion. How important is the formatting to you?