Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I ran across this on Kickstarter: http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/Kicks.... It purports to be a project to enhance book discoverability by matching readers with books.

I personally have mixed feelings about such projects, but I’m curious if anyone else here has heard of this projects and what people think about it.

Yeah, the core claim to "Magically finding interesting books" is almost an oxymoron. Magic = not real. They've obviously given a lot of thought to this, but "scouring the web for articles about books" is only going to find books that people have written articles about. Their goals are laudable, and I hope they do well, but in the end it's just another online bookstore. I wouldn't give them money.

Richard wrote: "Yeah, the core claim to "Magically finding interesting books" is almost an oxymoron. Magic = not real. They've obviously given a lot of thought to this, but "scouring the web for articles about boo..."

Anyone using "Magically" outside of fantasy is not a good sign. It means either they don't understand it or they don't want me to understand it. Both are bad. I want books matched to me rationally so I don't waste my time with nonsense.

And you raise another point: discovery and matching are not the same thing. They seem to me to be conflating that?

While matching me with a book I don't know about is technically a discovery for me, I would not consider that "discovery" in the sense authors tend to use it.

Beyond that, this project seems to be trying to find a proxy for review quality, which is a good thing, but I'm dubious about it (given the state of semantic processing). My guess is that their approach is useful only to the extent it fails to catch on.

There are nearly as many 'resources' for 'discovering' books as there are authors. The problem is that while they are offering authors a chance to be seen, usually for a 'small fee,' they aren't actively seeking ways to allow people to discover their platform.
Usually any claims about how many followers/subscribers they have needs to be taken with a grain of salt because chances are good that number is 50-90% authors.
I joined one recently because they were new, seemed enthusiastic, and don't charge at the moment. I've not seen even the slightest bump in traffic. What I have seen, though, is their 'marketing' campaign which seems to be spam everyone on Twitter who mentions the word book or read. Unless I suddenly see a huge spike in sales, I have no plans to continue on after their 'free promotional period' is up.

Christina wrote: "There are nearly as many 'resources' for 'discovering' books as there are authors. The problem is that while they are offering authors a chance to be seen, usually for a 'small fee,' they aren't ac..."

I think I joined the same one. Hard to say whether or not it's effective for me. If so, it's effective only for one of my books out of four.

Pretty sure it's the same one. Interestingly enough, they keep shouting 'use our hashtag!' I did. Many times this weekend and was retweeted by many authors, but not their account.

most marketing schemes are lucky shots in the dark. there is no magic formula. the fickle market just latches on something interesting (whatever that may be) and runs it until the steam ends.

I wish there was a magic formula...and that I knew it. :)

Agree with everyone broadly. When I look at these sites, I dig into their success stories and find them not so successful. I look at their rankings and find them no better (or usually worse) than my own novel. That speaks volumes.

I have tried all manner of advertising and marketing, and I can count the successful ones on one hand. Happy to share what I know works:
1. Bookbub will work, for a reasonable amount of time too. If you are one of the few to get an ad, you will hit a top 100 subgenre, and stand a decent chance of staying there for a week or longer.
2. Book Gorilla will give you a place on a sub genre list for a couple days.
3. Kindle Nation Direct does this Kindle Fire giveaway which will keep you on a top 100 for the whole week, but after that not so much.

Everything else has improved my visibility, but not my bottom line so much. I still believe in book blogs and free giveaways (2 weeks, no longer). Goodread giveaways will add your book to people's to-read list, but expect those to trickle in as sales. If you can find an active forum to do a giveaway with (Apocalypse Whenever is doing one for my book right now), that will translate into sales AFTER the giveaway and hopefully discussion to boot.

Until an author has established enough of a fan base, which in turn often does free word of mouth advertising with friends, most schemas designed to make a book more discoverable will be more hit or miss.

I've considered a paid ad for a promotion, but I would go with something like ereader news today rather than pay what book bub is asking. Still, I'm wary of any service that feels I should pay to promote a free book. I'd do a 99¢ sale and at least have the possibility of recouping the cost.

But ads for discounted books are not exactly the same as these 'database' style sites. They claim to offer readers a chance to discover an author or a book that they may not find using Amazon's search parameters. Some of these are genre based, some are indie exclusive, most require a fee to be listed. Personally, I think the best way to discover new authors in the genre you prefer is right here on Goodreads. There is no shortage of authors and not only that, readers get a glimpse of our personalities as well.

Christina wrote: "There is no shortage of authors and not only that, readers get a glimpse of our personalities as well."

In that case authors like me are probably up the proverbial estuary without the customary means of transport and locomotion.

I've found that the GoodReads 'Readers Also Enjoyed' list on each book page is pretty good click-bait. I've tacked several books on my to-read list just by clicking around.

I think the idea of a perfect system for finding books is purely subjective, and could potentially just be a money-making scheme. If they don't want you to know how it works, that's kind of a red flag.

I can recommend a pretty reliable source to help you find a delightful new book: a librarian! :)

Librarians are lovely, K B, but like bookshops, they don't generally find indie books. The resources they use to locate books are controlled by the publishing companies.

Just sent my monthly request to Bookbub. Interesting how the Scifi fees have gone up from $280 to $410 since August of last year. That's for the 99c option, not advertising your free book.

It tells you Bookbub knows they have a stranglehold on indie advertising. They have become the Amazon of ads.

Rob, I think you have your new calling in life. Authors and readers need that kind of site.

Books need to have theme descriptions as well as genre descriptions to make this happen. And ratings on the big three topics.

Ex. Scifi adventure with a fantasy slant. Themes include humor, high adventure, sword play, interdimensional travel. Sexuality 4 of 10. Language 2 of 10. Violence 7 of 10.

similarfiction.org is available, only $12 a year at 1-2-3 reg!

There is a group that I've stumbled on via twitter. Look up the hashtag #IndieBooksBeSeen It's not the best grammar, but they run a background site that promotes indie authors and small press published books.

They are free to list, all they ask is that you help promote other indie authors. (Oh, wait, isn't that what you're talking about wanting to do?) Not sure if they'll remain free, but for the moment they are.

Also Readers gazette. Another site I've found that's free to list. And, I've already seen my books being tweeted by them. The tweets aren't the prettiest things, but they come through once or twice a day, and I am seeing an uptick in my page views from them. Also Reader's Gazette lets you make quizzes and games to help promote your book. (Still figuring out the game thing, though).

I'll track down the links in a bit. Still mostly asleep.

Rob wrote: "I think the only 'discoverability' thing that could actually work would be a solution to the problem of genre's being a truly bad system for creative work.

As a reader, when I have read a book tha..."


In theory, yes, this could work. But without a team of readers vetting each book, it quickly becomes a muddled mess of authors deciding their book fits with everything. This is why Amazon scaled back the number of categories a book can be in from seven to two several years back. Too many authors were sticking their book into whatever was popular.

Funny. I just got an email from some company offering paid reviews. Super slimy and not even trying to act like a legitimate company. I feel like forwarding this to Amazon for lawsuit fodder.

Actually, the term ant-monkeys just moved you up the list of tbr books I'm working through. ;)

But sadly, there are authors who do not consider the consequences. Your metric can't read. I'm assuming the author would have to be the one to plug in the book's info. I can still see someone just picking every possible keyword/category/popular convention to get themselves noticed.

There is, of course, the possibility that I am missing something. I will admit that when words like algorithm, metrics, and analytics get tossed around, I tune out. I left the corporate world when people stopped speaking English in favor of Buzzspeak.

There is also https://everywhereindies.wordpress.com/

Rob wrote: "@Christina, what you basically need is a metric that translates to a location in an N-dimensional space. If you have that, than it isn't possible to 'fit with everything'. You will suffer when posi..."

LOL! This really tickling me. Back in the late 90's I developed a methodology to predict the evolution of NIIs (National Information Infrastructures) that did almost exactly that and then used clustering algorithms (which were more than just calcs of the "distance" in the space, although that's what we did first) to designate exemplars. It was very interesting and enlightening. One thing we learned is that clustering algorithms are squishy, and they tend to show you whatever you are looking for. So we developed an alternate methodology as a check.

And no, this will not work based on author input. What is needed it some form of semantic processor that extracts metrics from book samples and assigns them. That would be the fun part, although there is a discipline out there that used textual analysis to try to assign authorship of unattributed works. (Who wrote the Shakespeare plays, for example.) I suspect it pretty wooly, however. If anyone can figure out how to actually make money on this, I might put in a bid to work on it.

Any other ideas for domain names? (favfictionfinder.com? :-P ) Being a domain reseller, I can grab them. :-)

Edit: here's a thought. Sell this to GR as a "plug-in" to replace whatever they use for recommendations. Use people's favorites as reader input. Display the results as a stoplight chart (or something*). Include a visibility index to highlight works that are otherwise obscure.

* Or an animated color-coded 3D graph of "your reading universe." We actually did this and it was really helpful for visualizing the data. (Build a "reading tree" for people who like that style of presentation.)

K. wrote: "There is a group that I've stumbled on via twitter. Look up the hashtag #IndieBooksBeSeen It's not the best grammar, but they run a background site that promotes indie authors and small press pub..."

The problem with IBBS is that 100% of that audience is other authors. I don't want to sell to other authors. Also, when I mentioned that the movement didn't result in booksales on my blog, one of the creators wrote a ten paragraph essay-comment on how his wrist hurt from RTing people all day and how dare I talk about ineffective.

That, in essence, turned me off to the movement entirely.

Discoverability does not happen overnight. You have to work at it every single day, talking with new people, growing relationships, all of that. There are no shortcuts, unless you win the lottery, but you can't bank on that.

My books have hit #1 on space opera twice. The first time it was thanks to being a new free book coupled with the strength of my relationships. I had built enough goodwill that my fans and friends shared my stuff, and that catapulted me up to a point where the book was in front of new readers.

The second time it hit #1, I used a Book Barbarian ad, coupled with a Kindle Free Day for my second book. I will give a full-throated rec for Barbarian - $8 and I'm still riding high from it a week and a half later.

And Christina, you follow me so you know my obsession with metrics. I still love you even though you tune me out (HAH!)

I just saw this in another group:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

(No endorsement, info only.)

And Christina, you follow me so you know my obsession with metrics. I still love you even though you tune me out (HAH!)

You know I love you back, but girl, you can make my eyes cross! ;)

And I agree about IBBS and nearly every other hashtag aimed at driving books. Over the weekend, I used a few and had over 100 retweets on my promos and the author con I was participating in. All the retweets were from autbors, going out to other authors, and I certainly didn't see sales numbers that would suggest thousands of potential readers saw my work.
Thanks for the tip on Book Barbarian!

Owen wrote: "I just saw this in another group:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

(No endorsement, info only.)"

This would be the one Ken and I were cryptic on.

S. wrote: "My books have hit #1 on space opera twice..."

Congrats! I just realized who you are. I noticed one of your books some time ago. Nice to see it's doing well. :-)

Christina wrote: "Owen wrote: "I just saw this in another group:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

(No endorsement, info only.)"

This would be the one Ken and I were cryptic on..."

Yep.

Christina & Ken: I did note that. I decided to go ahead and list our books. Seems low risk at this point.

Marketing is a full time job. building relationships on various social media platforms, digging through emails, updating websites and blogs, reading and talking about other folks books, doing interviews and reviews... and this is after the day job. you barely have time to create new stuff. after i got fed up & had a breakdown from stress, i took a break for 3 months. sales dried up instantly. no amount of money thrown at others to do the dirty work will suffice - the hard part is on your shoulders.
so either suck it up and roll up your sleeves and promote what you have or dial back and create new stuff. both can't be done... unless you're taking amps or something...