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We love a good book title...

8/30/2011

9 Comments

 
Picture
…like, say, JURASSIC PARK. Or ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE. Or, for that matter, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENUIS, which happened to be our title of choice when we started on our autobiography. (Turns out, somebody grabbed the title first, forcing us to abandon our opus.) So, absolutely, titles matter to us.
 
This image comes to us, gratis, from the folks at publicdomainpictures.net. Iguana tell you, the price is right!

It was one of the main reasons we’ll be publishing THE ATHEIST’S DAUGHTER on our own. We wanted to keep the title we picked. This may have been a mistake.

You see, other than you and you, our fan base consist of us and us. Even the Moms say they're on a fixed income and can’t afford to buy our books. They CAN afford to buy The National Enquirer every week and PEOPLE magazine never escapes the grocery bag but, as they've pointed out, neither of those things are books. To sell copies of our new novel, we need to let the rest of the world know it’s available. To inform the world, we can either (a) pay for advertising or (b) find some book bloggers to review our tome. 

We’ve been bumping elbows with the indie publishing crowd and, by and large, they tell us advertising doesn’t pay off. They also tell us that book reviews aren’t much of a help, either, but that’s not been our experience. When WICKED GAMES pleased a reviewer, sales spiked. So we eagerly began courting book bloggers, hoping to duplicate the experience.

Man, oh man, were we in for a bitter surprise. Even though we’ve told bloggers that T.A.D. is a supernatural thriller/paranormal horror story, our title has made an impact. A chunk of reviewers refuse to look at our novel, for fear it’s secretly a Christian-themed story. Other reviewers refuse to read our book, for fear it’s secretly an anti-Christian themed story. No one seems to believe a book carrying this particular title can be anything but religious or anti-religious.
 
*sigh*

To date, we’ve knocked on twenty-five different book blogging doors. Two people have offered to read the book. We really like those two people and will like them even if they hate our novel. Because, sooner or later, we’re going to finish our next novel and we’ll need a review from someone, somewhere, to help sell the thing.

Our next book’s title? THE PREACHER’S SON.

 


9 Comments
V. J. Chambers link
8/30/2011 09:53:13 am

It's tough finding reviews these days. I just sent out requests to twenty or so reviewers and got nary a response from any of them.

Maybe they're all just swamped. ?

Reply
Renée Harrell
8/30/2011 01:01:33 pm

We've been following your career, VJC, and you were one of our inspirations to go indie. If memory serves, your titles first began to sell in significant numbers because of some glowing book reviews.

You're right, bloggers are getting smashed with dozens of requests for reviews daily and it's getting harder and harder to catch anyone's attention.

One way to get some notice? Write a guest post. In fact, we're saving a spot for you right now....

Reply
Steve Haynes
8/31/2011 08:53:57 am

That's a shame because you're two great writers (I should know). All I can suggest is you make use of Facebook to drive interest about the new book to this site. Also twitter is very useful - you'd be surprised how many times #atheist and #daughter are used - it might enable you to embrace the 'controversy'. I've sent out a call and a link mentioning 'The Atheist's Daughter' on FB and twitter, so you may get a little bit of interest.

Reply
Charles Christian link
8/31/2011 11:40:55 am

Hi
My name's J C Christian and my phone number ends in 666 and Steve Haynes is about to publish my new SF&F collection. But seriously I write a SF oriented blog + I write reviews for the Ink Sweat & Tears webzine - happy to write a review/run a story about your book.
Charles

Reply
Renée Harrell
8/31/2011 12:34:34 pm

Steve,

Thanks for your generous offer. We'll absolutely take you up on it...but can you wait until 09/14 (our release date) to say anything?

Charles,

Congratulations on the upcoming publication! Steve is a terrific editor.

We'd love a story about The Atheist's Daughter but, even better, we'd love a review of 'Aly's Luck', our upcoming Proxima release.

Reply
Debbie Moorhouse link
8/31/2011 09:52:31 pm

Do a giveaway on Goodreads?

Reply
Renée Harrell
9/1/2011 05:44:09 am

We've thought of Goodreads (great minds think alike, eh?) but we can't seem to post our book's image, no matter how we try. Lame, I know, but there you are.

It's tough to do a giveaway if people can't see the item we're giving away.

Damn technology.

Reply
Ana link
9/4/2011 02:51:15 pm

Got the review request for Atheist's Daughter and came over here to learn more. Was reading the blog and the comments and V. J. is right. I am pretty new at book blogging and yet I am sent at least one review request a day. It's crazy. I hope readers can find our blogs as easily as authors seem to (no offense. At all)

And the guest post thing is on the spot too. I just love when I can be lazy and let the author do the work :P But seriously, it's not just that. An author's own post tells the reader a lot-about said author, his mindset, style of writing, and other stuff. And the blogger can get to more authors that way.

You should try the Goodreads giveaway again imho. It gets a lot of publicity-and you can always contact them for help. If that still doesn't work, just join a couple groups and leave a post about yourself and your books. It helps when you get to know the members a little bit too. Joining the right group is essential because some are filled with honest and sweet people while others, haters. I would know ;)

Reply
Renée Harrell
9/5/2011 04:02:24 am

Ana, thanks for stopping by.

Because of your comments (and Debbie's, too), we've decided to make the Goodreads thing work for us.

We think it will, too. If all goes well, we'll have a book giveaway posted on the date of our novel's launch.

Reply



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