Break Time is Over!

So, things have been a little quiet on my end.

Truth be told: I needed a vacation after my vacation. I took a mental holiday from writing for a while. For non-writers, it might be a little hard to imagine writing as stressful. What can be the big deal? Just sit at a keyboard and write. It's not rocket science. Unless, of course, you're writing about rocket science.

But when you're indy published like me, there's a constant battle between creativity and productivity/self-promoting. How do you find time for both? When do you know which is more important? I see fellow indy writers churning out book after book and rocketing to the top of the charts while I work at a comparative snail's pace. Book Bub ads get handed out like candy to others when I just get vaguely-worded rejection emails. Adding to this crisis were a few unpleasant encounters with troll-ish Amazon reviews and poor reception to Allies and Enemies: Rogues.

It made me question if I had what it takes to be a "real" writer and left me in a head space that wasn't a very nice place to be.

I had to take a step back and decide what kind of writer I wanted to be. Is my goal really to churn out a book a month like some of "book factory"? Where do I want to focus my time and energy... writing or promoting?

In the end, I know I'd be happier just writing. Maybe I'll sell a few less books, but the ones that I do sell will be better constructed, polished stories of which I can be proud.

Allies and Enemies will continue. I'm working on a revised plot for book 3, Allies and Enemies: Exiles. It might end up being uber-long... which I hope isn't a bad thing.

Seeing stars: Amazon Reviews

I admit it. I was the kid in class that reminded teacher that he or she had forgotten we were supposed to have a quiz that day. This made me wildly unpopular. It was just part of who I was/am.

Besides, my main motivation was to get those wonderful little “A”s sketched across the top of my page of loose leaf. If I were to look at them now, I’d recognize them as the scrawl of an exhausted teacher and ultimately useless. But at the time, those precious “A”s looked like tiny Rembrandts, my personal masterpiece and evidence that someone approved of something I had done.

So I find myself reminded of those times when it comes to the reviews of my book on Amazon. There are even stars, just like 4^th grade. A means of arbitrary categorization. It’s very cool to get 5 stars, mind you. It means someone had a great time reading your story. A very flattering experience. For a while, I was getting a mess of those.

Then it happened, as it was bound to, a two star rating with a review that was a little on the vicious side. Contextually, I saw this two star review just as I was still internally snoopy-dancing about the fact that Allies and Enemies: Fallen had received the top 50 for military scifi onAmazon. (Totally cool seeing my book cover on the same screen as some of the “rock gods” of the same genre.) So, to see this was a bit of a let down.

My gut tells me this one bad review is exactly what it was: my book just wasn’t their cup of tea. It’s going to happen. Even Stephen King gets bad reviews and I have been his “number one fan” forever.

But it begs the question: Do I address it? Ignore it? How do other authors deal with negative reviews? I’ve become a big fan of Lindsay Buroker, having encountered her steampunk books. She’s got some nice advice about dealing with this:

http://www.lindsayburoker.com/tips-and-tricks/tips-for-dealing-with-bad-book-reviews/

Ultimately, I choose to have faith in the readers out there browsing for a new adventure. They’re intelligent folks that can make their own decisions, weighing the good against the bad. I accept the fact I can’t change everyone’s mind and it reminds me that with each word or agonized-over passage I grow as a writer.

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Book Tangle

So recently I launched my ebook, Allies and Enemies: Fallen to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Apple via a service called Book Tango. I used them because I was fearful that the format for my ebook would not work correctly across all the various platforms and they could do it for me for a modest fee. It seemed like an easy one stop shop for getting everything done. 

Well, it ain't that easy. It's over two weeks now and I have no idea of how my book is doing in terms of sales. Therefore I have no idea if how I'm promoting the book is having an impact. 

So, I'm getting rather frustrated. And I'm pretty sure I'll be off-roading things when it comes to book 2 in the series. I'll have to cowboy up and figure out formatting on my own if I want control of the sales info! I'm really disappointed with my Book Tango experience so far.