# I can't figure out why my novel isn't selling



## Yup (Nov 7, 2016)

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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

I found the blurb completely uncompelling. There are three paragraphs, and two of those are spent telling all about the themes of the novel, and hardly anything about the story. That could be contributing to your conversion issue.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

It took me a while staring at the cover to figure out the Adam title was in the roller coaster. It's a clever design but with the author name floating like that and the brightest thing on the cover, that's the only thing I see at first so I was trying to figure out the name of the book.

The blurb, as Shayne said, is uncompelling. For a description you want character, tone, genre, stakes, and a hook. 

I read the look-inside and as a reader I would nope out right when the main char starts talking about how women have to be intelligent to hook him. He sounds very young and kinda sexist and not at all compelling. I don't know why I should care about him meeting this woman and after a couple paragraphs in his head I was like "Lauren, run!" so... I dunno.  I guess the sexism is right in the description because the only thing we know about the woman is that she is beautiful until she isn't. Women have values other than "pretty" so I dunno what that is supposed to convey. What kind of book is this? If it is literary fiction, you are going to have a hard sell anyway as a self-published author (and in general, frankly). There's just not a huge market for it and you have to be 100% on top of your craft to gain any traction.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Well, first problem is I had no clue which was your fiction book from the cover thumbnails. I'm guessing it's Adam, but the title and cover gave me no clue as to the genre.

The cover is bland, it's all blue, white, and black, with no other colors or anything to draw the eye's interest. If it was in a lineup with other covers, I'd skip right over it. I get the roller coaster represents his life journey, but the title just blends into it to where you don't even see it and all I see is a blue sky with clouds and the author name too low on the page--makes me think DIY.

This might be causing you to get fewer clicks with all your ads than you would get otherwise if your cover had color and something more fun than the roller coaster to draw attention to itself. Check out the other covers in your genre. They are all colorful. Well, compare to just the coming of age ones. The romance covers all have couples on the front or man chests.

For those clicks you did get, they go on to see the blurb...

The blurb 'tagline':

Adam asked Lauren to dance. And it began. 
And she was beautiful, until she wasn't. 
And they were together, until everything unraveled. 

Hmm... began what? Ok, possibly intriguing. Then the girl turned ugly--sounds like she is going to be someone to dislike. So this isn't romance, especially since it sounds like this doesn't have a HEA. Yet you snagged a romance category. Bad signal mixup there. Seems like lit fiction so far maybe?

In the body of the blurb you write things like: 

A gripping novel...
A rousing, poignant, and deeply honest read...

Those lines are telling the reader what to feel but the blurb is so generic it isn't showing or evoking that feeling in them. I'm not connecting to Adam at all and at the end of the blurb, I'm feeling rather meh.

This is where you've probably lost the clicks. If they do go to the Look Inside, they get a VASTLY different voice from the blurb. It's so drastic a disconnect that it is going to repel people who liked the blurb and the blurb will repel people who would enjoy the Look Inside. The blurb sounds very adult with serious issues, even though you say young person, I was guessing mid 20s. The Look Inside sounds very immature teenager with attitude. The blurb needs to be written from Adam's perspective, not the hired mature adult person who wrote the blurb. That way the audience who would enjoy your book is doing the clicking

You should also check your ad copy to make sure it's representative of who Adam is and his journey instead of sounding mature adult with their s- together.

Oh, and as Annie mentioned, the kid sounds very sexist and objectifying women, calling her little woman (chiquita when he just met her), demanding they be intelligent and sexy, etc. As a female it was off putting. So perhaps the women clicking were turned away from the Look Inside?


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

I agree with the other two posts. The blurb alone sends me to sleep, never mind the book. Also, it is not up to you to tell us the book is gripping; that would send me running for the hills to start with.


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

Doglover said:


> I agree with the other two posts. The blurb alone sends me to sleep, never mind the book. Also, it is not up to you to tell us the book is gripping; that would send me running for the hills to start with.


You might not be aware, but for some reason there's an avalanche of best selling books using the tagline "a gripping thriller" in the actual title of their book. Just do a search.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

ShaneJeffery said:


> You might not be aware, but for some reason there's an avalanche of best selling books using the tagline "a gripping thriller" in the actual title of their book. Just do a search.


And do you pay attention to anyone claiming their thriller is gripping? Duh, it better be gripping, it's a thriller. I pass over those lines when I see them and let the actual blurb with actual contents sway me (or not).


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

C. Gold said:


> And do you pay attention to anyone claiming their thriller is gripping? Duh, it better be gripping, it's a thriller. I pass over those lines when I see them and let the actual blurb with actual contents sway me (or not).


Well, there must be a reason so many books have it in there. While it certainly has zero effect on me, it definitely isn't holding people back from those books.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Well, there must be a reason so many books have it in there. While it certainly has zero effect on me, it definitely isn't holding people back from those books.


Probably because the rest of their blurb is thrilling.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

ShaneJeffery said:


> You might not be aware, but for some reason there's an avalanche of best selling books using the tagline "a gripping thriller" in the actual title of their book. Just do a search.


Yes, but those descriptions are not written by the author, are they? One expects those sort of descriptions from major publishers, or editorial reviews, but if I say my books are gripping, I am being a pretentious a-hole and I wouldn't expect anyone to buy them.


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

Doglover said:


> Yes, but those descriptions are not written by the author, are they? One expects those sort of descriptions from major publishers, or editorial reviews, but if I say my books are gripping, I am being a pretentious a-hole and I wouldn't expect anyone to buy them.


I'm willing to bet at least a portion of them are written by authors. But I'm not sure most readers even pay attention to that stuff. Personally I don't have a problem with an author calling their books gripping, or whatever other adjective. You expect a certain amount of salesmanship. Then again, even the best of us can go too far.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/james-patterson-own-blurb-quote-stephen-king-tweet-black-book-release-a7675316.html


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

ShaneJeffery said:


> I'm willing to bet at least a portion of them are written by authors. But I'm not sure most readers even pay attention to that stuff. Personally I don't have a problem with an author calling their books gripping, or whatever other adjective. You expect a certain amount of salesmanship. Then again, even the best of us can go too far.
> 
> http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/james-patterson-own-blurb-quote-stephen-king-tweet-black-book-release-a7675316.html


I used to like James Patterson, but that would frighten me off. I can't believe he sells more than Stephen King, either.


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## wearywanderer64 (Jan 27, 2013)

I can see immediately why it isn't selling. I'm afraid I 'm going to have to be blunt, but it's because I want to help you.

1. Cover.

It's too plain and uninteresting. Try Pixabay (it's free) and search under 'fairground.' You'll find better and more colourful images there. 

2. Font.

Make it bigger, clearer and standout more.

3. Blurb.

I would start it with - Adam is a man-to-be... (something like that)

4. 'look inside' 

Get a female beta reader to read it because it sounds quite laddish, which is okay if you want your character to be sexist, but I don't think you do.

If it's any consolation, my ebook isn't selling well either, probably for the same reasons I'm giving you.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

with the non-trivial caveat that there will never be one answer to this sort of thing, and everyone's tastes are different: if you've made the best product you can make and nobody's buying it, it may be that you haven't written something enough people find appealing to buy.

Apologies for the bluntness.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

GeneDoucette said:


> with the non-trivial caveat that there will never be one answer to this sort of thing, and everyone's tastes are different: if you've made the best product you can make and nobody's buying it, it may be that you haven't written something enough people find appealing to buy.
> 
> Apologies for the bluntness.


Pretty much this. It's all down to basics. Since you asked, I'd say the cover, title and blurb are working against you. Ad copy writers probably aren't the best people to write fiction blurbs. And you have a punctuation error in the first sentence. Picky, I know, but readers notice.

As to the writing itself, who is the audience? If it's men, well, maybe you're on the right track. But women buy and read the most, so starting out with a beautiful woman who must be able to hold an intelligent conversation? I don't know. It's just off-putting to me. I know it's hard in first person, but maybe step back from the immediate encounter and set up Adam as a person a little before he's meeting his little woman.

None of this is an insurmountable problem. First novels are hard. Selling first novels isn't any easier. Trust us, we know.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

What's wrong is always easy. The chain is cover -> blurb -> look inside -> purchase. Anything that breaks the chain is a problem. Often, there are multiple problems.

How to make that right? That's a very hard problem, far harder than it looks.


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## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

Glancing at the cover I thought it was at first a memoir, then a self help book, that was my first impression. I would have it redone. If you paid to have your blurb written, I would advise going with someone else next time and here is why.
The first paragraph could be interesting, but it falls short. I won't rewrite it for you but its needs more. 

The second paragraph is like a grocery list and put me off the book 
A gripping novel about love, life, and self-discovery, Adam: The Story of a Man to Be follows a young person through joy and angst, sex, drugs, dependence, courage, and rebirth.  As for an example to point you in the right direction something like, " Adam is twenty-x, and  his X personality leads him to the road to meeting X. But for him to "goal/plot point/ he will first have to summon the courage to confront X,  while facing the truth about X.

Adam -The story of a man -is a coming of age story that deals with the x and x, promising the reader X

Good luck


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I agree w/ others about the cover.  It sort of looks like non-fiction, and I too had to look twice (or thrice?) before I noticed the title, Adam,in the roller-coaster supports.  Ye, it IS quite clever...  I like that factor... but it doesn't help you.  In fact, at first I thought the title of the book was "Michael" and it was written by Eli Vineberg.  As a very quick 'fix,' if you want to keep the roller coaster image, I would move the coaster to the top half of the cover and then have the author name (in smaller text) in light font on the darkened bottom half.

I haven't read the blurb or anything else, so I'll let others offer that sort of advice.


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## MClayton (Nov 10, 2010)

I think the issue is a combination of the blurb and the Look Inside. You've gotten clicks, so people are getting past the cover (although I completely agree with Jena H's comments) and stopping on the product page. As someone above mentioned, your blurb sounds like it was written by a mature adult, but your Look Inside indicates a very young adult. As a young adult, I'd be turned off by your blurb. As a mature adult, I'd be turned off by your Look Inside. The blurb needs to capture the tone of the book in order for you to reach the audience you're trying to reach. 

I see your categories are Coming of Age and New Adult & College. If I were you, I'd take a look at the blurbs of the best-selling books in those categories to see what sort of blurb will appeal to your younger audience.


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## Ebook Proofreading (Oct 11, 2017)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> The link to it is in my signature. It's my first and only fiction book. My ads for it have gotten clicks. To the tune of well over two hundred clicks between five ads that I have run between AMS and FB. I have worked with a copywriter to focus them with concise and engaging language and they are definitely getting the clicks, but pretty much nothing is converting into sales or KU downloads. My cover is professionally done, my book is professionally edited, and my blurb was written by a talented copywriter. Honestly, I don't get it. And the people who have read the book have all enjoyed it. What am I missing?


I think you should change the cover and work on the blurb.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

After reading the Look Inside you're a competent writer. Regardless of cover and blurb, the genre of your book is "something different if you're willing to give it a try". And that, of course, is an extremely difficult genre to sell. It has no clear target audience, it has no clear  genre, it has no clear appeal to anyone. Which doesn't mean you've written something bad, only that in the Amazon pool of publishing you're fishing without a hook, let alone bait.
You need an amazing cover, an amazing blurb, and a damn clever Facebook ad to get people to have a look.
Without reading further, I suggest your problem isn't the book, it's the product. You're going to have to think a lot harder about reaching your potential audience. And when you do, a dynamite cover and blurb will give you one shot at getting a sale.


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## Accord64 (Mar 12, 2012)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> My cover is professionally done, my book is professionally edited, and my blurb was written by a talented copywriter. Honestly, I don't get it. And the people who have read the book have all enjoyed it. What am I missing?


Sorry, but I have to agree with others regarding your cover. It might be professionally done, but it doesn't look professionally done. I think the main picture is clever, but it unfortunately conveys a non-fiction vibe. Your author name in a plain, white font over a sky backdrop (hard to see), and oddly positioned in the picture is the probably biggest turn-off.


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## A. N. Other Author (Oct 11, 2014)

Having things like "gripping" etc in the description isn't problematic in itself - those are selling words, after all. It just that there's not much else. A lot of TELLING the reader what they will feel when reading instead of SHOWING ("show don't tell" isn't just for inside the book). 

There are some ambiguous bits at the beginning but it feels a bit dreamlike, almost surreal. I'd aim for giving the reader the hook in terms of what makes the story compelling. End with the "gripping" and "rousing" stuff, but bring the story front and center.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Here's what your blurb should sound more like:

Hi, my name is Adam. So I met this girl last night and she's phenomenal. What's that? You ask what she's doing with a loser like me? Yeah, good question. When I'm high on drugs and partying like it's 1999, I can do anything and be anyone. It's the crash that sucks 'cause I'm all sorts of messed up and know as soon as she gets close I'll push her away. But what if just this once I get my shit together? Yeah, right. And pigs will fly. Still, I gotta try.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> The link to it is in my signature. It's my first and only fiction book. My ads for it have gotten clicks. To the tune of well over two hundred clicks between five ads that I have run between AMS and FB. I have worked with a copywriter to focus them with concise and engaging language and they are definitely getting the clicks, but pretty much nothing is converting into sales or KU downloads. My cover is professionally done, my book is professionally edited, and my blurb was written by a talented copywriter. Honestly, I don't get it. And the people who have read the book have all enjoyed it. What am I missing?


For me, the cover and blurb just aren't eye-catching or intriguing. Sorry!


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Lynn Is A Pseudonym said:


> This sounds like an NA romance blurb, those sexy ones meant to tell about all the angst coming our way.
> 
> OP, I don't think I'd recommend you write your blurb like this unless that's the kind of novel you've written.


More look at the tone, rather than the contents since I have no clue what that's gonna be.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

I feel like the only one here whose eye was drawn to the title immediately. It's not a genre-style cover, but I suspect from the blurb and the look inside this is more literary fiction than genre. I admit, the roller coaster motif made me go in expecting something more along the lines of "wry comedy" than tragedy, though.

The blurb seems to imply something more tragic than the cover.

And like Annie B, it took about two paragraphs inside the POV characters head for me to nope right out of there.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

Dragovian said:


> I feel like the only one here whose eye was drawn to the title immediately. It's not a genre-style cover, but I suspect from the blurb and the look inside this is more literary fiction than genre. I admit, the roller coaster motif made me go in expecting something more along the lines of "wry comedy" than tragedy, though.
> 
> The blurb seems to imply something more tragic than the cover.
> 
> And like Annie B, it took about two paragraphs inside the POV characters head for me to nope right out of there.


I didn't see the title in the roller coaster until someone in this thread mentioned it. It is clever but since I gave my first impression (which is your only chance to get people to pause to look) I didn't see it. I squinted and thought the title was Michael something. I get that the cover artist is fantastic. I've seen some of his other stuff and yeah, it's great. Maybe if the roller coaster had been moved up and the author's name down at the bottom, I would have noticed. I'm kind of glad I didn't know who the artist was on first impression because it might have influenced my opinion.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Like Annie B, I didn't notice the title until I closed the sample. New cover, I'd say.

Most of the blurb is written from the wrong POV. The second half is not a description of the story, but a judgment about it, which, on top of that, should come from a reviewer, not the author.

I couldn't get through the sample. I agree with the "laddish" description. Expressions like "plan of attack" used when talking about picking up a woman sound creepy when you don't know the character and his motives. But there's also the pacing. It's slow as mud, and I didn't see what was going on.

Anyway, good luck.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

I couldn't get four paragraphs in. As soon as he mentally starts talking about "conquest" like the woman in question is some sort of game animal, I couldn't go on. I know guys talk like this on PUA boards ... but ick!

I have written misogynists and made them heroes before. I wrote a story called "Rush" that is in this anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Kiss-Romantic-Faerie-ebook/dp/B01MYDRO61/

It has brought A LOT of people to my series, and I've gotten a lot of Super Fans from it despite the fact that he anthology is targeted towards female readers.

I think the reason why it worked was because I started off showing the good part of him, _and then_ I show his misogyny. After showing it, I show why he has such problems with women. In the end he is on the road to overcoming it.


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

Trioxin 245 said:


> Glancing at the cover I thought it was at first a memoir, then a self help book, that was my first impression. I would have it redone. If you paid to have your blurb written, I would advise going with someone else next time ...


Yeah, memoir or self help was my first guess. Even dwelling on the cover, with no other information, I've no idea what genre it represents.
And I agree with almost everyone on the blurb. It really needs a rework. I know blurb writing is a pita; I'm struggling with it myself. This might not be a popular point, but I think if your professional copyrighter works in traditional publishing or advertising that goes a long way to explain the one or two steps removed style. Immediacy with character identification and stakes aren't really a staple of old school trad ad copy. But it's increasingly essential in grabbing a reader in indie publishing.
Also, the guy does seem like a real douche in the opening. Which is why I do like your rewrite a LOT better.
It identifies to the reader that you the author know this guy is a piece of work so we as readers can temper our distaste by knowing our reaction is shared; and, can expect that either he's changing over time or getting a comeuppance.

Sorry my take is mostly critical on the packaging, blurb, etc. But if you're at all like me, I'm sure you appreciate the feedback.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

I like the cover; it seems appropriate for literary fiction. And if I still read lit fic, which I don't much anymore, I wouldn't have a problem reading a story written from the POV of a sexist or otherwise not-lovely young man. Drawing the reader to empathize with or root for someone she'd probably dismiss if she met him IRL ... that's lit fic's bread and butter. But with a story like this, where I can tell we're going to spend a couple hundred pages going on a deep dive in this guy's head, I need for him to be _interesting_ right off the bat, and the way this character speaks and thinks doesn't interest me. In fact, he's firmly in ho-hum territory for me. There needs to be something about him that draws. It doesn't have to be a nice thing, and the interestingness doesn't have to be _in his character _from the beginning; you're using past tense, so the interestingness could be there in the more mature narrative voice that looks back critically on his earlier self. But there has to be something that makes the reader believe this guy's thoughts and experiences are worth devoting time to. Examples of books with problematic young male POV characters who have this grabby property for me: _Trainspotting_, _High Fidelity_, _The Catcher in the Rye_, _The Magus_. There are tons of others. The "young man who needs to learn something" is a major lit fic trope, one of the very biggest. The trick is getting a primarily female readership to want to dive into his story despite his initially unattractive/problematic state.

I do think the blurb is too vague to prompt much interest.

Like Annie said upthread, lit fic is still dominated by traditional publishing and the major review outlets it relies on to reach that small but dedicated readership. It's a tough sell for indies.

ETA:



WHDean said:


> I didn't see what was going on.


This describes my reaction as well, after having skimmed the Look Inside. Lit fic is somewhat more forgiving when it comes to plot looseness and leisurely beginnings, but the idea that it doesn't need to have a coherent plot arc is a common slander rarely borne out in reality. By the end of the Look Inside, I do want to have some sense of directional movement in the story, and I'm not really getting that.


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## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)




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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> "Adam is immature, self-centered, and sexist. He's drifting along, untethered, through his early twenties.
> 
> Then he meets Lauren. And everything changes, but not how you'd expect.
> 
> ...


As a female reader, this blurb would lose me on the first line. I deal with immature, self-centered, sexist men all the time, so the last thing I want to do is read a book with one as the protagonist.

For me, a compelling blurb needs some details, not just generalities, because it's the details that make a book something I want to read or not. And if you start out with a character who is a jerk, one of the details you're going to need to include is why should I look past my dislike and spend time with this guy that I wouldn't ever want to spend time with in real life. If you can't do that, you're probably going to lose a lot of readers.


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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Marty South said:


> WRITING: The good news is, I read a few paragraphs and, based on that, I don't think it's the writing. I know some here object to the character for various reasons, but we're not shopping for friends here. We're shopping for a book filled with interesting characters in a compelling story. So far, I haven't seen evidence to suggest that this book offers anything else.


I don't know if I'm just weird, but shopping for friends is what I'm doing. If I don't like the main characters in a story -- or at least, if I actively dislike them -- I'm certainly not going to want to spend time in their company. I have zero interest in spending my time with jerks, be they real or fictional. Maybe I'm the only one, but I kind of think I'm probably not.



Luke Everhart said:


> It identifies to the reader that you the author know this guy is a piece of work so we as readers can temper our distaste by knowing our reaction is shared;


I find myself wondering how much this would matter to a lot of readers. Knowing someone else doesn't like the guy doesn't make me even the slightest bit more inclined to read a story about a jerk. Neither does knowing that the author did it on purpose.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

ShayneRutherford said:


> I don't know if I'm just weird, but shopping for friends is what I'm doing. If I don't like the main characters in a story -- or at least, if I actively dislike them -- I'm certainly not going to want to spend time in their company. I have zero interest in spending my time with jerks, be they real or fictional. Maybe I'm the only one, but I kind of think I'm probably not.
> 
> I find myself wondering how much this would matter to a lot of readers. Knowing someone else doesn't like the guy doesn't make me even the slightest bit more inclined to read a story about a jerk. Neither does knowing that the author did it on purpose.


Yep. I read the Look Inside and thought, "What an enormous flaming a-hole." The idea that a beautiful, vibrant woman would go to bed with him on no acquaintance seemed like some kind of male wish-fulfillment fantasy. The horrible predatory language right from paragraph 2 or whatever it was. And then him talking over the intimate details with his hound-dog friend. Just blech. I'd run, and I'd expect the female main character to run. If she sticks around, I've got zero respect. And now I don't like either of them.

So it's good characterization, in the sense that, yeah, this guy seems true to life. However, it's no news flash to women (the majority of readers for this kind of book) that lots of young men are like this. It's not something we want to keep reading for insight. We've got that insight already. If we don't, we just have to go to Tinder and there ya go. You need to offer up some hope of redemption in the story if you want to keep a female reader past Page 1, IMHO.

Cover may be by a famous guy, but it's not a good fiction cover. You can't even see the author name. It looks like a DIY. And the blurb is very blah. With a story in first person, you want the blurb in first person also. The blurb has to tell the reader what kind of story it is, and entice them to read it, in a very immediate way.

"About a Boy" is about a man stuck in this kind of arrested development, who becomes a man. You might want to take a look at that and see how the author keeps the reader in there despite the hero's immaturity. I can't remember, but I read it, enjoyed it, and watched the movie, so clearly he did something that worked.

Sorry to be blunt, but I had a seriously bad reaction to reading the first few pages of this book. It's sort of the whole #metoo campaign right there--he touches her without having spoken to her, and her reaction is, "I wondered if there was any guy in here who had the courage to touch me." Seriously? No. Just hell, no. Attractive women are not thrilled to have strangers touch them. The first few pages read really badly in that sense, and women are sensitive to that.


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## gilesxbecker (Mar 20, 2017)

Douglas Milewski said:


> What's wrong is always easy. The chain is cover -> blurb -> look inside -> purchase. Anything that breaks the chain is a problem. Often, there are multiple problems.
> 
> How to make that right? That's a very hard problem, far harder than it looks.


That's really interesting. Thanks. Sent me scurrying off to check my own books.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

No one is saying he needs to be squeaky clean but to many he is not engaging at all early on. He's just a douchebag.


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> Great stuff here. Thanks for feeling comfortable to share your reactions and feelings. I won't give away anything from the book, and because of that, I won't really comment on some of this stuff - especially the elements that are bothersome to some women in the early chapters. I can only say this much, which is that the feedback from people who have finished the book has been overwhelmingly positive. Regardless of gender. But men and women definitely experience the book differently, and how they connect with the characters has been fascinatingly distinct. Honestly, I very much look forward to the dialogue that it generates. This has all been baked into the manuscript in a conscious way and was anticipated before publishing. With all due respect, I think that some people here lack the context of the mindset of people of that age group and how they interact. It's nice to think of characters as clean, sanitized, likable and unoffensive, but human beings have shadows and this book dives willingly into that. Adam isn't meant to be beautiful early on, only engaging. He is a slave to his lack of ability to do anything other than conform to his environment.


There won't be a dialog if nobody reads the book. We don't need beautiful, we need compelling. What the feedback in this thread is trying to tell you is that you don't have compelling down, he's just coming off flat and one-dimensional. If people aren't buying your book, you are failing to engage them.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

The irony is not lost on me. I do find it an appropriate epithet, but I can say he's an ass, if you prefer. 

I read the first few pages and would never bother to read on. That's a problem. He might well become engaging later on, but lots of people will never get there because he's so off-putting in the early stages. There's not a hint of something compelling or appealing at the start. Imo, it needs that.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

This feel more and more like one of our "yeah, but" threads.


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> You do realize the irony of using the word d**chebag to speak badly about a male sexist character, don't you? The term itself is misogynist in nature and has at its core a disrespect and disgust of women's bodies. I'm just pointing this out because it seems remarkable to see it used in this particular context.


Nah, it's misogynistic that douches exist in the first place.


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> With all due respect, I think that some people here lack the context of the mindset of people of that age group and how they interact.


Wow. Way to knock people's opinions down. If you don't want them, don't ask, or put limitations on who you want to answer them. I may be old, but I'm not totally out of touch with the rest of humanity.


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## C. Rysalis (Feb 26, 2015)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> Look, some people here blame the cover. But that flies against the data. Why would someone click a cover-centric AMS ad and then decide not to buy the book on the landing page because of the cover? They wouldn't. But it is still very helpful for me to hear what people didn't like about the cover.


It's possible people click the cover expecting genre X, and then don't buy because the blurb / look inside makes them realize the book is in fact genre Y, not X.

This is exactly what happens when a book cover doesn't represent its genre.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> Look, some people here blame the cover. But that flies against the data. Why would someone click a cover-centric AMS ad and then decide not to buy the book on the landing page because of the cover? They wouldn't. But it is still very helpful for me to hear what people didn't like about the cover.


What about the ad copy (that 150 chars of click bait)? Perhaps that is working instead of the cover. Perhaps people see the cover and think WTF is that so they click it to expand. You don't know for sure it's not the cover working against you. There is a disconnect between people enticed to click for whatever reason (cover, tag line) and wanting to buy your story (blurb, look inside).

But you can find out by changing the blurb to sound more like your book contents and see if that improves the click to buy ratio. You could also use a different image in a new FB ad to see if it can improve both the number of clicks (which I think is low for 5 ads) and the number of buys. A/B testing can expose where the weaknesses are, but you have to be willing to consider each aspect could be at fault, even if the cover was created by some (usually) amazing designer.

If you change everything around and it's still a no go, then it's the initial impression of Adam in the Look Inside. That can also be fixed or tweaked and maybe just that first page needs a bit of a nudge to get readers to keep reading so they can get to the enjoyable bits.

Good luck


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> The link to it is in my signature. It's my first and only fiction book. My ads for it have gotten clicks. To the tune of well over two hundred clicks between five ads that I have run between AMS and FB. I have worked with a copywriter to focus them with concise and engaging language and they are definitely getting the clicks, but pretty much nothing is converting into sales or KU downloads. My cover is professionally done, my book is professionally edited, and my blurb was written by a talented copywriter. Honestly, I don't get it. And the people who have read the book have all enjoyed it. What am I missing?
> 
> Edit to add: I am running a second version of my blurb. So the initial one when I posted this will no longer be visible in half a day or so.


You answered your own question with the second sentence.

Forget you ever wrote that first novel. Set it aside. It's not going to do much of anything without a second one to back it up. Yeah, some have done well with a first novel. Some have been struck twice by lightning, too.


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## Sam Rivers (May 22, 2011)

> My cover is professionally done, my book is professionally edited, and my blurb was written by a talented copywriter. Honestly, I don't get it. And the people who have read the book have all enjoyed it. What am I missing?


I have had that problem with a couple of books. I changed title, rewrote blurb, remade book covers, etc. However, the book did not sell better.

I think some books do not sell well and there is nothing you can do about it.


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## Tizzy (Sep 6, 2016)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> Look, some people here blame the cover. But that flies against the data. Why would someone click a cover-centric AMS ad and then decide not to buy the book on the landing page because of the cover? They wouldn't. But it is still very helpful for me to hear what people didn't like about the cover.


Because the cover gave them the impression the book was something, when in truth it was something else. A beautiful/attractive cover isn't everything, you know? I could put a beautiful woman in a handome man's arms on the beach on the cover and, while it might attract clicks, I'm sure that won't help me sell my sci-fi epic. And it will be because of the cover, even if I'm getting clicks, because the cover will be attracting the wrong crowd for my book.

I mean, exactly that happened to me (although it wasn't a romance cover or a sci-fi epic, but still.)



Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> Honestly, I very much look forward to the dialogue that it generates. This has all been baked into the manuscript in a conscious way and was anticipated before publishing. With all due respect, I think that some people here lack the context of the mindset of people of that age group and how they interact. It's nice to think of characters as clean, sanitized, likable and unoffensive, but human beings have shadows and this book dives willingly into that. Adam isn't meant to be beautiful early on, only engaging. He is a slave to his lack of ability to do anything other than conform to his environment.


See man, the issue isn't that Adam is immature or a sexist pig or annoying or off-putting.

The problem is that said character is your protagonist. Even if you're writing an anti-hero you don't want to start with his flaws. Breaking Bad didn't start with Walter White shooting people and making people OD to get them out of his way, or did it? It started with the man as a very likeable chemistry teacher who got cancer and had a perfectly understandable (for the situation) reason for cooking meth. All the bad stuff? that came later, first they made us love the character and get invested.

You're starting with the ugly. Which might work, if you're writing an outright villain, but then you need to make it clear this guy's train of thought will be his undoing. And even then, some people will be put off by it. You want a conversation around your book? we all want that. For example, I'm 100% sure that a religious zealot will eventually grab my first novel, read it without bothering to understand its message, and proceed to call me every single insult in the English language, along with some borrowed ones, because I'm anti-religious, anti-christian and clearly the antichrist. And that's if that person isn't a scientologist, because the latter will consider them suing me.

But I didn't put any of the religious comments on the very first page of my book. I started out in a way that wouldn't be off-putting except for people who don't like humor, in which case they're totally not my market so that's fine. By starting your book out in a way that not one, but several authors here consider misogynistic you're just shooting yourself in the foot unless, again, you're aiming for a crowd who don't mind female objectification and immaturity. And said crowd exists, of course, but I'm not too sure they're big on buying self-published authors on Kindle. Female readers,however, are.

So to close my comment, the issue isn't your character, or his flaws. The issue is that he's the protagonist and the very first thing you show is off-putting on a level many people will refuse to accept.


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## Tizzy (Sep 6, 2016)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Some have been struck twice by lightning, too.


Statistically, if you're struck by lightning once, you're more likely to get struck a second time than any random person is to get struck a first time.

Shame a successful first-novel author can't write two first novels, uh?


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## mojomikey (Apr 9, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> You answered your own question with the second sentence.
> 
> Forget you ever wrote that first novel. Set it aside. It's not going to do much of anything without a second one to back it up. Yeah, some have done well with a first novel. Some have been struck twice by lightning, too.


Why don't you just cut right to the chase instead of pussyfooting around, Wayne? 

Everytime you post I learn something, or have to something to think about, or figure out a way to improve my own work. Thank you!


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## NoCat (Aug 5, 2010)

If your cover isn't selling your book, it isn't working. If your book isn't selling your book, it might also be the issue. How many clicks per impressions are you getting? If you are getting thousands of clicks and no sales, the ad copy and the cover might be promising something that the description and the look-inside is not fulfilling.  Getting defensive about people trying to tell you what turns them off and what might be the issue isn't going to help much, but it's your book. If you feel everything is fine, why even ask?

And some of us were early 20s not that long ago, so... insulting people by calling them too old to remember what it was like to be young and wanting to hook up with people is probably not a good look when coming to a forum wanting free advice.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

But, first they would have to have been struck the first time. My point is that the odds of making anything close to "living on" money with one book, is on the order of a million to one. It just doesn't happen.


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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Shawn Inmon said:


> This thread feels like a take down of the book, which is fair game, since the OP asked for feedback. However, that original post focused on why AMS ads weren't delivering sales.


One very good reason for ads not delivering sales might be because people find the book uncompelling or offensive. Just saying...


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

Constructive criticism follows regarding the cover, interior formatting, and categorization. OP, as always, you are free to use or discard.

1. For a lit fic novel, I love the roller coaster part of the cover, and I spotted the name making up the support struts right off. The rest of the cover? Meh. Kind of bland. Author name is too prominent, especially for a not-already a household-name NYT/USA Today best-selling author. I would center the roller coaster image, put the author name near the bottom edge, and put a hooky tagline amidst the clouds.

2. Center the TOC. Left-justified TOCs make the TOC page(s) look off-balance and weird. They also make it too easy for a reader to teleport to a random chapter if they happen to move their left thumb a twitch. Note to everyone: Please center your TOCs.

3. There's a random period after the TOC entries for chapters Twenty, Thirty, and Forty.

4. Your book has first-line paragraph indenting _and_ blank lines between paragraphs. That right there is amateur enough for me to not read further than the LOOK INSIDE sample.

---Non-fiction: No indents. Blank lines between paragraphs.

---Fiction: First paragraph of a chapter or following a scene break should not be indented. All subsequent paragraphs indented. No blank lines between paragraphs.

5. Spelled-out chapter numbers with hyphens should have the numbers on either side of the hyphen capitalized. e.g., *Chapter Twenty-Seven*, not *Chapter Twenty-seven*

6. I'm having a problem placing myself in the time of this book. As best I can determine, the story opens in 1997 ("About two years ago, in 1995, I was in the northern part of Guatemala.") But then there is a current reference to a song from 1985 (also, song titles should be italicized, not in quotation marks).

7. One of your visible categories is "Romance > New Adult & College." Unless you are intimately attuned to the reader expectations of tropes for that particular niche of the Romance genre, I would highly recommend you change your keywords to get out of it. If your book does snag an audience, that audience won't be particularly kind in reviews if your book isn't what they thought they bought.

8. Maui Wowie. Maui Waui, if you're waxing pretentious. But never "wowee."


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

The problem with this kind of character is that the voice has to be spectacular. Voice and writing have to do all the heavy lifting, propping up the less-than-endearing character until you reach the point where you start rooting for him or her. Your voice and writing just ain't cutting it. There are good bones there, but you're not quite _there_ yet.

Want to see it done well? Emma's Chase's Tangled is a romance novel, but her voice is amazing. When we first meet the protagonist, after the prologue, he's a real male appendage. But that voice and that writing ... *Swoon*

https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Book-1-Emma-Chase-ebook/dp/B00DJWV11I

You need to read more good books. Write some poetry. Play with arranging words in an interesting way.


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## Mercedes Vox (Jul 22, 2014)

SevenDays said:


> The problem with this kind of character is that the voice has to be spectacular. Voice and writing have to do all the heavy lifting, propping up the less-than-endearing character until you reach the point where you start rooting for him or her. Your voice and writing just ain't cutting it. There are good bones there, but you're not quite _there_ yet.
> 
> Want to see it done well? Emma's Chase's Tangled is a romance novel, but her voice is amazing. When we first meet the protagonist, after the prologue, he's a real male appendage. But that voice and that writing ... *Swoon*
> 
> ...


Holy crap, I was just going to amend my post previous to yours, SevenDays, and mention that same book, when I received an alert that someone else had posted and I should review my post.

Yup, yup, yup. If your MC is going to talk stream-of-consciousness to the reader, go big or go home. And if he (or she) is sort of an a-hole to start out with, find a compelling reason and have a significant character arc to convince the reader the character isn't a jerk.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

All the stuff written already is probably true (cover and blurb criticisms, definitely), but the biggest reason is that you're writing in a niche market, as far as indies go. There's no _there_ there.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I've not read _Tangled_, but I took a look at some of the Look Inside. _That_ is how you engage a reader with voice.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

MonkeyScribe said:


> All the stuff written already is probably true (cover and blurb criticisms, definitely), but the biggest reason is that you're writing in a niche market, as far as indies go. There's no _there_ there.


Yeah, I agree with this. You can improve the cover, blurb, writing for this book but it won't take off because there's no genre. You need to see what's already selling and replicate something like that.


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## Charmaine (Jul 20, 2012)

Are you missing the redemption scene? 

Many people have commented on the character being unlikable and an early redemption scene in the story is always necessary when writing a story about that type of character. 

That scene may be later in the book, but you need one almost immediately, even if it's small. 

Have Adam help a lost child find their mother or rescue a stray cat or something that makes the reader see that he's a worthy unlikable person who is capable of redemption.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

A little "pet the dog" moment can go a long way.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

SevenDays said:


> The problem with this kind of character is that the voice has to be spectacular. Voice and writing have to do all the heavy lifting, propping up the less-than-endearing character until you reach the point where you start rooting for him or her. Your voice and writing just ain't cutting it. There are good bones there, but you're not quite _there_ yet.
> 
> Want to see it done well? Emma's Chase's Tangled is a romance novel, but her voice is amazing. When we first meet the protagonist, after the prologue, he's a real male appendage. But that voice and that writing ... *Swoon*
> 
> ...


I think I hate you a little bit right now.  I'm 9 bucks poorer because of you!  Yeah, ok, I'll admit that Look Inside was awesome and snagged me. Dang U!


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## TellNotShow (Sep 15, 2014)

I never saw the original blurb, only the new one. I've read a few pages. I think I understand what you're trying for with this book, but could be wrong. So my advice is based on only those things, take it or leave it.

I do think the cover's wrong for the book. Hugely important.

I really like the new blurb, and think you've done well with it, but one of the words needs to be changed. Where it says "gripping" it needs to say "tender." That will appeal to readers who are hoping for the character arc that I assume (hope) will be found in the book. Just changing that one thing will improve your conversion rate, I think.

Then, you still have the problem several people have pointed out. The character is turning people off. I understand that he will change for the better. How about a glimpse of that? Perhaps even a half a page prologue, a heart wrenching moment from later in the book, something to show the reader their time with the book will be rewarded with something beautiful. Such a prologue could also make it a better book. That's all I have.


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## Jack Krenneck (Feb 9, 2014)

MonkeyScribe said:


> All the stuff written already is probably true (cover and blurb criticisms, definitely), but the biggest reason is that you're writing in a niche market, as far as indies go. There's no _there_ there.


Yep. Another agreement with this comment.


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## klerner (Feb 4, 2018)

Finally registered after years of lurking just to reply. 

I'm gonna agree with the majority.

1) First, the cover: Before I read the rest of the thread, I looked at your signature to find the book you were talking about. And it took me some mulling over to choose which one was the fiction offering. That's a problem.

They all look like home-made nonfiction works (although I doubt an amateur would have come up with the design for the rollercoaster incorporating the title--that's a big exception). So, with the greatest respect to your cover designer, I don't understand the direction he went regarding:

a) the placement of the main title, which as I said, _is_ a solid idea and indicates some clever thinking on the designer's thought, but it's so low on the page that it's overwhelmed by the rest of the elements;

b) the tiny, unreadable size of the subtitle; and

c) the bland, almost lazy font choice of your name, with almost no contrast against the background clouds.

I am no professional designer by any means, but I've slapped together something that at _least_ puts the title where it belongs, adds a more prominent subtitle with a hint of a contrast color, and even for the heck of it adds "a novel" just in case the darn thing _still_ doesn't hammer the point home. 

(I'm actually not usually a fan of the "a novel" designator, which can seem kinda pretentions IMHO. But this is a rare instance where I think you need it, given the design that doesn't immediately broadcast its genre.)

















Again, I know the above is still obviously home-made, but... I think it's more in the direction you want to go. If I were an illustrator I'd've tried to make a silhouette of a young guy lounging or even falling (kind of a _Mad Men_ vibe, I guess) beneath the rollercoaster. _Something_ that says "guy with issues / trouble."

e) almost forgot: you should really hyphenate "man-to-be" in the title. Like "bride-to-be." Otherwise it reads as if you're promoting "Adam" as the sort of man people should be. Like ad copy: "Adam! He's the man to be, baby!"

2) Now to the blurb. I'm reading the current/new one, and it's not super strong, I'm afraid. I dig that you want to be all literary and suspenseful and mysterious--I write mostly suspense myself--but OMG, you gotta tell us _something_ substantive about the story!

As is, there's nothing that I, Ms. Reader, can hang my hat on and think, "huh... wow, that's an unusual hook/plot/character/setting I might want to get lost in" or (in the case of the 1st-person example by... mmm I think it was *C. Gold*?) "what a funny/cynical/ominous/wise voice or writing style; lemme see how this reads in the sample!"

All the blurb tells me is that there's a young guy who's a jerk, then he meets a girl, and it like blows up his world. That's the generic elevator pitch of any coming-of-age tale (or romance novel/rom-com as told from the bad-boy's POV, heh). Not quirky enough to tempt me.

I strongly suggest giving up more details. Heck, if Agatha Christie managed to find a blurb that didn't spoil _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ and M. Night Shyamalan's PR folks found ways to advertise _The Sixth Sense_ without spoiling their works for the audiences, I bet you can manage to sneak in a little more juice to the blurb without ruining the ride.

At least tell us what makes this character unique enough to follow. Why is he worth our attention, assuming he is? Why is he _worth_ redeeming, assuming he takes a stab at it? For that matter, why is this woman so earth-shattering? It can't just be that she's smart and beautiful. Is it coming at a specifically vulnerable period for him? A birthday? A friend's marriage? Something resembling anything?

If you haven't yet, you most need to figure out precisely the audience you want for this novel. What's the ideal age, background, gender, etc.? Aim your pitch at them. (Ditto the cover, for that matter!)

One trick: Imagine you're a regular, non-author fan of _Adam_ and write a pretend Amazon / GR review of it, relatively spoiler-free. What highlights would you use to sell the book to your fellow readers? Not just "it's gripping" (especially because while that _is_ incredibly popular as a descriptor, that's almost exclusively intended for psychological thriller / suspense books with _shocking twists you'll never see coming!_). What grabbed you about the characters, the milieu, the journey?

As for plot revelations, for this exercise I'd even recommend going a _little_ farther than you, as the writer, are comfortable regarding spoilers. This is just role-playing a potential fan who wants to be an evangelist for this amazing book he's just read to other potential readers; in this scenario, it's okay to frustrate the author.

Once you have the review, mine that for your blurb. Then bring it back here--as you said, you're not trying to sell _us_, so it's okay to spoil. The many experts here will let you know if you've given away too much. (I suspect you'll still be erring on the side of caution, so I bet that won't be a problem.)

Funnily enough, the current review that's up there is as generic as the blurb. It's great that you got a four-star review off the bat, so yep, people do like the book! But his/her review doesn't do much for me either, it's so non-revealing of anything that might intrigue me enough to trigger that purchase. Good for your overall average, but it's not adding much context for potential buyers.

3) The "Look Inside." Yep, the first few pages do make Adam sound like a selfish, shallow, overindulgent pig. But he's not a hugely interesting one, at least, not right off the bat. (I second, or third, or fourth, the recommendation to read the beginning of _Tangled_--it's a fantastic use of voice in a very similar setting, though I think the hero there is a bigger deal/more successful than Adam is, so aside from his current predicament, his life has more glamor to it.)

Mostly, he sure doesn't come across as _intelligent_ enough to justify his being such an intellectual snob re: his partners. His internal dialogue sounds immature (which may be intentional for an unformed young man), so maybe there's supposed to be irony in his demanding good conversation from his _chiquitas_. (Did he learn his game from _Nick @ Nite_ reruns? 'Cause that lingo makes him sound a bit like Larry from "Three's Company.")

Then there's a sudden lengthy and (to me) overly detailed description of the nightclub, especially given that there's literally nothing that hasn't been in a nightclub since 1975. Disco balls, glitter, thumping music, awesome DJs, drugs: yep yep yep yep and yep. Sure, he's listening to _trance_ so that pushes the date up to at least the '90s, but still... as a reader I'm not seeing anything new here.

C'mon, seduce your reader the way Adam would allegedly seduce these girls. He's got _something_ worthwhile, some reason that _you_ want him to pique our interest. Don't be coy. Show us the whole package! Pun totally intended! 

Some like Wayne have said that since this is your first book you should just give up and write the next one. I wouldn't presume to contradict him! I just wonder if maybe this book could maybe use more editing for style and to punch it up. _Especially_ that first chapter.

All right, shutting up. Hope this helps, and I wish you the best of luck. Sorry for being so verbose on my first post. Gulp.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Hi, OP. I can't give you marketing advice or anything of the sort. However, I took a look at your book and would like you give you a reaction as a reader/someone searching for a book to read.

At first, I missed the title on the cover. I didn't know what the title of your book was until I looked at it a little longer and my eyes adjusted. I shouldn't have to look that hard for a title and if this is how we're starting out...what lies ahead? So I forged on and saw your book is called Adam. Okay...totally a lit fic cover then with a title to match. Got it. 

Then I read the blurb. I see what you're trying to do there and who you've written about. But the blurb reminded me of a meathead at the bars when I turned 21, who had no real connection with his soul and just went out with his buds on a Friday night to tear it up and get laid. I hate this kind of dude. Yes, I do think they can turn their lives around so I head to the look-inside.

I start reading the sample and the writing is not connecting with me. It's not engaging me. This is okay because I don't read literary fiction and so therefore I'm not your reader. But I continue reading and I see something that's not a fact: your character mentions his weed high is still going strong from hours before. Uh...weed highs don't last for hours, that's why they say 'chiefing all day every day', because it wears off eventually and you have to smoke numerous times to keep a high while partying (like the character is). I stopped there. It's clear to me, and I'm not trying to hurt your feelings by saying this but what it comes down to for me is this: I cannot trust this author because he tricked me with the cover, immediately starts me off with a meathead in full party mode (without letting me see his soul and humanity), and then also doesn't know a basic scientific and social fact about smoking marijuana and how the drug acts. Starting me off right away with the brokenness of this person isn't going to work for me but hey, I'm also not a lit fic reader so everything I've said can be cast to the wind. 

Anyway, just a few thoughts. Good luck!


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## WordSaladTongs (Oct 14, 2013)

Lorri Moulton said:


> I'm a fan of Klerner's cover. I prefer it over the existing one or the two alternatives.


Agreed completely. I think the Klerner cover, with its "man-to-be" inclusion helps me realize that the punchable d**che-bro voice in the beginning is not going to last, and that might help me overcome my objections to said voice.

FWIW, I'm a huge reader in the lit genre. I personally wouldn't pick up books with the other three covers but would pick up something like what Klerner has done.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> I wasn't planning on touching the cover, but there are some very interesting comments regarding the expectations created (or not created) with my present cover. I now am in a situation where I have changes that I would like to make to the existing cover, in order to clarify elements being conveyed to potential readers. But...I also wonder what people here think about two of the alternative ones that we looked at with our designer. So I'm going to post them here and I would like some feedback if they would be preferable to working with the current one, or if I should just fix up the current one to better reflect genre/that it is fiction and not non-fiction or memoir/etc. Thank you in advance. Here's the imgur link to them both:
> https://imgur.com/a/hvlrS


Neither of those really matches the feel of the book either. The one you have is the best of the three. Maybe you should see if you can get some of your money back, because I get the idea that you spent quite a bit on the cover and it's not working for you.

As for the book itself, I read literary fiction, and it doesn't grab me. The main thing for me is that this is the same story that every other male student in my college writing classes wrote. Young guy is lost in life until he meets a woman who changes everything. Then she typically dies or dissapears after serving her sole function of making the guy's life better (don't know if that's how yours ends). I'd say chalk this up as a learning experience and stop spending money on it. The readership isn't there. Indie lit fic is hard enough to sell, but when it's the same story we've all read a hundred times...

If you're interested in salvaging this as a money-maker, here's my crazy idea. Re-write it as M/M with a HEA. Change the cover and title appropriately, and take the advice about working on the MC's voice.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Just wanted to say, welcome out of lurkdom, Klerner. Great first post. Thoughtful and helpful.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

@klerner

Great first post. High signal-to-noise ratio.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Paranormal Kitty said:


> If you're interested in salvaging this as a money-maker, here's my crazy idea. Re-write it as M/M with a HEA. Change the cover and title appropriately, and take the advice about working on the MC's voice.


Sorry, but this is absolutely terrible advice. Clearly the OP has a flavor for a certain type of novel, and you're telling him to rewrite it for a market he's not already in and, by the looks of his backlist, is into something else entirely? Come on, not cool.


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## Tizzy (Sep 6, 2016)

Michael Eli Vineberg said:


> I wasn't planning on touching the cover, but there are some very interesting comments regarding the expectations created (or not created) with my present cover. I now am in a situation where I have changes that I would like to make to the existing cover, in order to clarify elements being conveyed to potential readers. But...I also wonder what people here think about two of the alternative ones that we looked at with our designer. So I'm going to post them here and I would like some feedback if they would be preferable to working with the current one, or if I should just fix up the current one to better reflect genre/that it is fiction and not non-fiction or memoir/etc. Thank you in advance. Here's the imgur link to them both:
> https://imgur.com/a/hvlrS


The first cover tells me Adam is a special needs child, and this is a story of overcoming his disability the best he can to make his dreams come true and find love among the way.

The second one speaks romance to me. As if it's about a somewhat broken man who gets changed by love, an uplifting novel.

I don't think either of them are what you're going for - in fact I'm sure the first one is NOT what you're selling so you definitely chose the best of the three with the rollercoaster.


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## Paranormal Kitty (Jun 13, 2017)

Rosie A. said:


> Sorry, but this is absolutely terrible advice. Clearly the OP has a flavor for a certain type of novel, and you're telling him to rewrite it for a market he's not already in and, by the looks of his backlist, is into something else entirely? Come on, not cool.


I said it was a *crazy* idea. He's only written one novel anyway, but if he wants to sell books then he does need to find a niche that has a market. M\M came to mind because it would mitigate the sexism.


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## Fel Beasley (Apr 1, 2014)

Rosie A. said:


> Sorry, but this is absolutely terrible advice. Clearly the OP has a flavor for a certain type of novel, and you're telling him to rewrite it for a market he's not already in and, by the looks of his backlist, is into something else entirely? Come on, not cool.


The rest of his books are non-fiction so he doesn't have a fiction market to be in. It might not work for him, but that doesn't make it terrible advice.

Coming at this from an advertising angle, 200 clicks is not that much. And you said that's between FB and AMS. Depending on genre, the connection between the ad and the product, and the product page itself, how many clicks translates to sales can vary. 1 out of 30 for FB ads isn't out of the ordinary. And that would be on average, averaged out across a larger number of clicks.

If this is lit fic (which it seems to be) how you are targeting your ads is supremely important as well. If you are targeting your ads incorrectly, clicks won't result in sales. Lit fic is hard, both to sell and to advertise.

And while reviews are far, far from most important, one review isn't really helping you, either. Your cover probably works for lit fic, the blurb doesn't work for me, and as has been said as well, the voice (which is probably the most important aspect of lit fic) isn't compelling enough to hook me.


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## Piano Jenny (Nov 30, 2016)

Paranormal Kitty said:


> I'd say chalk this up as a learning experience and stop spending money on it. The readership isn't there. Indie lit fic is hard enough to sell, but when it's the same story we've all read a hundred times...


As someone who had to do this myself, I agree.

I know that sounds horrible when you've worked so hard and spent so much money, but there's no point in focusing much more on this book. My first book was not any real genre. (It had other problems too.) And I'd had multiple stories and articles published in various magazines before then, so it wasn't like I knew nothing about writing.

For myself, I had to learn more about plotting (the book _Save the Cat_ was a huge help to me) and shift my writing so it felt better into an actual, with an appropriate cover to match. The next books did a lot better -- not amazing, but much better sales _and_ reviews than the first.

When you publish the first book, it feels like, "Ta-Da! I'm finally here!" In actuality for a lot of us, though, it's really the first step.

But first steps are a good thing.

Best of luck.


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## ruecole (Jun 13, 2012)

Klerner's cover redo is amazing! Well done! I recommend going back to your designer and getting a revision made. The title is so much more obvious and clever-looking. And it actually looks like fiction now.

Also I agree with everyone suggesting you add either a prologue or rewrite the first chapter or something to introduce a "save the cat" moment. If you can't get readers invested in your MC, they'll never read on to the amazing ending you say you have in store.

Hope that helps!


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## Dr. Faustus (Jan 21, 2018)

I'll hop on the train and say the cover is pretty boring.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

I really liked klerner's cove, it's definitely a huge improvement over the original.



Rosie A. said:


> Sorry, but this is absolutely terrible advice. Clearly the OP has a flavor for a certain type of novel, and you're telling him to rewrite it for a market he's not already in and, by the looks of his backlist, is into something else entirely? Come on, not cool.


Yeah that suggestion was way out there.


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## Tizzy (Sep 6, 2016)

kw3000 said:


> Honest question: do indies really sell much in lit fic?


AFAIK, Lit Fic doesn't sell much at all, so I can't think of many indies selling lots of it unless they promote it as something else.


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## Vale (Jul 19, 2017)

Tizzy said:


> AFAIK, Lit Fic doesn't sell much at all, so I can't think of many indies selling lots of it unless they promote it as something else.


One of the Author Earnings reports had an indie literary fiction author making a killing at it, but I never knew who that was and it was just the one. I've been trying to keep my ear to the ground to get a feel for the indie literary fiction publishing scene, but except for table scraps from The Passive Voice now and then, I'm not finding much. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Vale said:


> One of the Author Earnings reports had an indie literary fiction author making a killing at it, but I never knew who that was and it was just the one. I've been trying to keep my ear to the ground to get a feel for the indie literary fiction publishing scene, but except for table scraps from The Passive Voice now and then, I'm not finding much. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.


One of the very earliest indie successes was Darcie Chan, who writes lit fic. But she went traditional. I haven't heard of another, though surely there must be some.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

You are asking for a critique it sounds like?

The roller coaster over Adam suggests a roller coaster kind of ride of life for a guy named Adam. Sort of a coming for age or things he has to discover about himself - from the cover and my short read. 

The opening did not really grab me.  MC meets a girl (woman) who is as smart as she is stunning. So why is a girl this smart going to pay attention to an average guy who does James Bond one-liners over the noise of maybe AC/DC (stripper music) in a pub. 

I stopped there. 

I was interested in learning more about the girl than the MC.  (Really maybe make her the MC and we see the changes in Adam through her as your story.  Girls are strange in what they are attracted too to me - so let us the reader figure out what she sees through her eyes ... a stunning smart girl wants to find out more about a goofy James Bond want-to-be one-liner guy in a Pub she just started hanging out in ... etcetera.  

What you have up front is, as said here, goofy sexist. So this is not romance at first blush (I am into SF&F so take this with a grain so to speak). So likely half your potential readers are turned off. It sounds a bit funny really up front to me. But if Adam does make a turn, I guess it gets more serious later. Don't know. )

Fiction market is so saturated and it is so tricky knowing if you have your work done right, not that I do.  I have a couple books out too. Short stuff.  I do not advertise. My rank sucks. But it has only been two weeks though. You don't start at the top. You slowly sink down in rank.  Wait to be discovered - not likely ... but we all hope.  

The only way to get sales it seems is build a following base and keep them advertised up and keep the books they like coming. 

Essentially you have one fictional work.  Your other 3 are sort of self-help and figure yourself out and such.  You seem to be an emotional guy from a quick look at those 3.  And thus this fictional book seems to show that this MC has some learning to do. 

Just what I think Mike.  Good luck.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

If you're getting clicks, the problem is NOT the cover. The cover is what drives the clicks. So, if you're happy with the number of clicks per impressions ratio, then the problem MUST lie with the blurb. It is not engaging the reader once they land on the page.  If the blurb doesn't engage your potential buyer, then they don't buy.

Your problem is the blurb.

That said, my advice would be to move on, write a second book. When that's done, if you still feel like working on it, go back and tweak the blurb on the first one. You might find however, that rather than spend time on that, you'll want to write the third novel. The real road to success appears to be a steady climb to a backlist...not perfecting the first release. These boards are rife with authors who've gone back after achieving some success and completely redone covers, solidified branding, and re-released.


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## Jaelynn (Jan 16, 2017)

Count me in as one of the posters that loved @Klerners' revised cover too.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

klerner said:


> I am no professional designer by any means, but I've slapped together something that at _least_ puts the title where it belongs, adds a more prominent subtitle with a hint of a contrast color, and even for the heck of it adds "a novel" just in case the darn thing _still_ doesn't hammer the point home.


OMG! This cover rocks it!!!!! Only nit would be the yellow 'of a' reminds me of help books or something... can't quite place my finger on it. But still, that's a huge improvement over the original.

De-lurk more often!


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

C. Gold said:


> Only nit would be the yellow 'of a' reminds me of help books or something... can't quite place my finger on it.


Books For Dummies maybe? Now that you mention it the yellow and white text on a black banner is somewhat reminiscent of that. (But I love it too. It's not *entirely* similar or anything either.)


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## C.Cross (Nov 14, 2017)

Just throwing in another +1 for Klerner's cover redo (and post in general)! So good.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Guy Riessen said:


> If you're getting clicks, the problem is NOT the cover. The cover is what drives the clicks. So, if you're happy with the number of clicks per impressions ratio, then the problem MUST lie with the blurb.


I think others have already pointed this out, but since you're saying things like _NOT_ and_ MUST_, I've gotta reiterate:

Not all clicks are equal.  The blurb could be _perfect_ for the novel's genre, but have 0% sales conversion if the people who clicked the ad did so because the cover made them expect a _different _genre.

As it stands, the cover doesn't signal the genre of the book, so paying for those clicks is a waste.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

A.C. Crossan said:


> Just throwing in another +1 for Klerner's cover redo (and post in general)! So good.


I agree it's much better, but I don't think anything is going to get this off the ground. To use an extreme example, imagine if someone wrote a 1,000 page epic poem, then put a stunning cover and a wonderful blurb on it. It still ain't gonna sell.

There are obvious problems, and there are fundamental problem. You can fix the obvious, but the other is intractable.


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## ibizwiz (Dec 25, 2014)

I'm too old to pile on to what the rest have said. Bluntly, if I did it would be analytically even tougher.

Instead. I'll say this:

After a crazily successful career in technology development and marketing, I was faced with the choice of pushing forward with it or dying under age 45. Or sooner. I changed my life completely. Even the continent I was killing myself in: I relocated to Japan in search of the "wa" I was missing as a Fortune Ten senior corporate bulls**t spreader.

I also decided to write the great American novel, a project I'd always wanted to do. Talk about one's posterior being shoved up one's fundament-als!

After 600+ single-spaced pages of absolutely uproarious sociosexual satire, I sent it to a well-regarded agent in the States. He politely explained it was brilliant, maybe, but unmarketable. He said the better choice might well be to go back to my workaholic career and get it over with and at least die busy, producing services people actually needed.

That was exactly 30 years ago. In 2015, I decided thanks to Kindletopia I might have a chance to actually sell a fictional work. I made a list same as I've done over five decades in my professional work.

I offer it to you:

1. Leave Literature to the ages. Leave Poetry to the poets. Leave Fame to the foolish.
2. Be confident in your fictional craft. Hint: there is no way to achieve this without writing many, many, many thousands of words and publishing at least half of them to learn if they "work" for readers. Bonus hint: Non-fiction craft is no substitute, no matter how much one has produced.
3. Ask who your targeted readers are. Ask *really rigorously* with numbers and evidence, not simply projecting your taste and assumptions on a million strangers.
4. First, deep breath! Then step back and ask why your vision would be of even the slightest interest to even 10%, hell, even 1 percent of these people? Be specific! What will engage them about your story? What will make them want to learn how it ends? What will make your story more compelling than the hundreds of competing ones in your genre? 
5. If you don't *have* a genre, then ask yourself how much bitter disappointment you can tolerate before giving up as a fiction author?
6. Ask yourself how much you're prepared to invest financially over at least three years. Hint: if it's not at least US10K, and spent with great skill, you are extremely unlikely to get your self-publishing mini-enterprise on a sustainable footing. Sure, you can go ahead and write it. Just don't have serious $$ expectations three years out. Are there exceptions? Yup. But your odds are at least 1000:1 one your opus won't be one of them.
7. Use my own private "Look Inside": are you writing to
- teach them some of your pet ideas
- to berate them for their sins or ignorance?
- to get their money, eg, by copying what other authors are writing?
- or to entertain them -- whether you make any money or not?

The only justifiable reason for adding more fiction to the great, mostly noxious pile of it produced by mostly forgettable writers since the 16th century is the last one.

Still determined to write that hit novel or series? Good for you! You're ready for the magic sauce.

8. Dream a really large, compelling, satisfying story.
9. Then write about 5% in the first book. Polish it. Edit it. Get it proofed. Then sit on it.
10. Seal it in a file and write the next two chunks and publish the three together, bam! bam! bam! over a few months, only *after* finding and assiduously preparing your niche audience for the coming revelations.

Based on my first-hand experience, for male would-be authors what's even harder is doing all this while maintaining one's humility and patience. Mind, I can't really be sure of this since I figure I'm only ever about 10% humble, and that's on a really human day, and patience is still a long-term goal in my case.

Do all of this, suffer all this introspective agony, and know the result:

Self-publishing is 25% drudgery; 25% fixing stuff that's not good enough; 25% being wrong-headed, egoistic, and emotionally immature; 25% selling your questionable work to strangers; 25% learning how to sell it better, 25% working tirelessly to build your readership base; plus, sure, 25% creative thinking; and yes, 25% actually writing sentences that make people want to laugh and cry at the same time.

What's that? Yeah, they add up to two hundred percent, because it's taken me until my seventies to learn that's what's required to be a successful author of fiction.

YMMV (but probably not by much)

Best of luck.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

crow.bar.beer said:


> As it stands, the cover doesn't signal the genre of the book, so paying for those clicks is a waste.


I'm not talking in general--in that case you are absolutely correct. Cover-genre mismatch will result in clicks, but not sales.

However, you seem very clear that THIS cover is not lit fic -- what did you think the genre is? What genre market do you think is excitedly clicking the thumbnail and being disappointed when they find out the book is lit fic?

If the blurb is turned into something exciting for lit fic readers, the new cover will only help, of course. But, I will still say, the clicks are coming with old cover--it's not the cover that is stopping conversion.

People are already clicking at a solid click-per-200-impressions-rate, and I believe they are expecting lit fic, but the blurb is not closing the deal.


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## Issy (Aug 25, 2013)

Ibizwiz, I love you.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

ibizwiz said:


> I'm too old to pile on to what the rest have said. Bluntly, if I did it would be analytically even tougher.
> 
> Instead. I'll say this:
> 
> ...


Great story. We don't get enough "uncanned" input around here.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Literary fiction often has unlikable characters right out of the gate. Often cryptic, unlikable characters that we never really get to understand, nor see redeemed.

BUT your voice really needs to shine in those type of stories and you really need to dazzle with theme, characterization, and descriptive narrative.

But it's a hit-or-miss genre. Maybe in ten years some famous reviewer falls in love with your book and rescues it from obscurity, you never know.

I don't think giving us a scene with a realistic (misogynistic man) is going to be THAT off-putting to the average reader...to other writers, sure.

Fix the blurb. Change the font on the cover (it's horrific) and go back through at least the first couple of chapters to make sure the voice is really driving the book.


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## ShayneRutherford (Mar 24, 2014)

Herefortheride said:


> I don't think giving us a scene with a realistic (misogynistic man) is going to be THAT off-putting to the average reader...to other writers, sure.


I don't know about you, but I was a reader before I was a writer. And my utter dislike of misogynistic characters has nothing to do with being a writer, and everything to do with the fact that I hate misogyny and, having to deal with it in real life, have zero tolerance for it in my pleasure reading.

I'm not saying that every woman will feel the same as I do, but I suspect enough will that the potential pool of readers will be quite a bit smaller than if your character was less of an obnoxious jerk.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Tizzy said:


> AFAIK, Lit Fic doesn't sell much at all, so I can't think of many indies selling lots of it unless they promote it as something else.


It sells pretty well. It's Top 100 begins at #2 storewide and tops out at #947 storewide. There are fewer indies on the list, but they're there, and they tend to get higher list prices.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> Literary fiction often has unlikable characters right out of the gate. Often cryptic, unlikable characters that we never really get to understand, nor see redeemed.
> 
> BUT your voice really needs to shine in those type of stories and you really need to dazzle with theme, characterization, and descriptive narrative.
> 
> ...


I agree that this is possibly the best way to do it and move on. Just fix what you can and write the next book. Sucks, yeah, but like Pianno Jenny said above the first book is basically just a first step for many of us. I'd add to continue refining your voice. If you want to write lit fic then get the best you can at your craft so that, when someone picks up your book they stay. If you're writing in a genre that doesn't sell well you must get gooooooooood. The best. Keep telling yourself that and don't give up.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

Usedtoposthere said:


> The main criterion for success as far as I've been able to see is whether you are writing books lots of people want to read. That's why genre matters. Authors like Annie B took "talent" that wasn't getting them ahead, applied it to a genre that had a readership, and found success. Niche can work fine, but there has to at least BE a niche large enough to hold you up.


No doubt. I will add that I think the people here regularly underestimate the readership for most forms of literary fiction. Sure, no one reads the hardcore post-modern stuff--it is a niche market. But the Amazon bestseller list shows unequivocally that people do read general fiction, a label that's often used interchangeably with lit fic. Depending on how you do the numbers, in fact, general fiction is probably overrepresented in the bestseller ranks.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

WHDean said:


> Depending on how you do the numbers, in fact, general fiction is probably overrepresented in the bestseller ranks.


Yes, but very few _indie_ writers are selling any of it, so it doesn't help the OP in this case.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

Dpock said:


> It sells pretty well. It's Top 100 begins at #2 storewide and tops out at #947 storewide. There are fewer indies on the list, but they're there, and they tend to get higher list prices.


I think you're looking at "Literature & Fiction," which is an umbrella category and thus a real grab bag. I bet if I went through that list, book by book, fewer than a quarter would strike me as actually being literary fiction. There's tons of other stuff in there -- fantasy, thriller, romance, women's fiction. If you drill down a level, there's Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction. The ranking spread there is 25 to 89,891 in the store, but there are only 48 books on the bestseller list, so that's not a category very many people are using.


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

Becca Mills said:


> I think you're looking at "Literature & Fiction," which is an umbrella category and thus a real grab bag. I bet if I went through that list, book by book, fewer than a quarter would strike me as actually being literary fiction. There's tons of other stuff in there -- fantasy, thriller, romance, women's fiction. If you drill down a level, there's Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction. The ranking spread there is 25 to 89,891 in the store, but there are only 48 books on the bestseller list, so that's not a category very many people are using.


I drilled down to Literature & Fiction>Literary Fiction. It looks _relatively_ clean as far as Amazon categories go (didn't see any ab covers, lol). Still, it is a grab bag in that individual book's subcategories are all over the place.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

Usedtoposthere said:


> With a story in first person, you want the blurb in first person also. The blurb has to tell the reader what kind of story it is, and entice them to read it, in a very immediate way.


I don't think a first person blurb is necessary for a first person story. Most of my first person books have third person blurbs. First person blurbs are a bit more trendy atm, but there are still plenty of first person bestsellers with third person blurbs.

That said, I don't think a first person blurb is a bad idea. And I liked the one posted upthread.



Lynn Is A Pseudonym said:


> This sounds like an NA romance blurb, those sexy ones meant to tell about all the angst coming our way.
> 
> OP, I don't think I'd recommend you write your blurb like this unless that's the kind of novel you've written.


It doesn't sound NA to me. Maybe vaguely. But sexy NA blurbs are much, well, sexier. I think reading some of those bad boy POV blurbs would help with creating a compelling first person blurb, even if you're going in a different direction. Whitney G's are the best that come to mind.



SevenDays said:


> The problem with this kind of character is that the voice has to be spectacular. Voice and writing have to do all the heavy lifting, propping up the less-than-endearing character until you reach the point where you start rooting for him or her. Your voice and writing just ain't cutting it. There are good bones there, but you're not quite _there_ yet.
> 
> Want to see it done well? Emma's Chase's Tangled is a romance novel, but her voice is amazing. When we first meet the protagonist, after the prologue, he's a real male appendage. But that voice and that writing ... *Swoon*
> 
> ...


Now, this is where I think you're going too NA/romance. There's a proud tradition of awful heroes in romance, ranging from lovable rapscallions to straight up sexual predators. Don't ask me why readers like it. I don't get it. (Okay, I kinda like the lovable rapscallions, but I don't like the guys who are jerks to the heroine). But it's not something that will fly in other genres.

I would check out some Nick Hornby books and see what he's doing. That seems like the vibe you're going for.


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## Crystal_ (Aug 13, 2014)

ibizwiz said:


> Still determined to write that hit novel or series? Good for you! You're ready for the magic sauce.
> 
> 8. Dream a really large, compelling, satisfying story.
> 9. Then write about 5% in the first book. Polish it. Edit it. Get it proofed. Then sit on it.
> ...


I find there's a real false dichotomy between literary fiction and genre fiction. Both exist to entertain, but genre fiction sells a lot better. OP, you may want to consider redirecting your energies into genre fiction if your primary goal is sales. You can write about jerky dudes coming of age in romance, but you'll have to do it in a way that appeals to women. I'm sure this is true in other genres as well, but I don't know other genres. Only romance.

Despite loving writing romantic screenplays, I hated the idea of writing romance when I started because I had an idea of what that meant, but it turned out I was totally wrong. Romances are basically coming of age stories in tandem (at least the way I write them), and they're exactly what I always wanted to write. But it took me half a dozen books to figure that out. Romance may not be the genre for you, but there may be a genre that does appeal to you, that lets you do everything you want to do in your lit fic and sell more books. It's not the right path for everyone, but it's something to consider.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

ShayneRutherford said:


> I don't know about you, but I was a reader before I was a writer. And my utter dislike of misogynistic characters has nothing to do with being a writer, and everything to do with the fact that I hate misogyny and, having to deal with it in real life, have zero tolerance for it in my pleasure reading.
> 
> I'm not saying that every woman will feel the same as I do, but I suspect enough will that the potential pool of readers will be quite a bit smaller than if your character was less of an obnoxious jerk.


Me too. I've read thousands more books than I've written, so I come at these things as a reader when giving my advice on content. I might be able to analyze it later as more of an author, but that visceral gut reaction is pure reader. And it said, ugh. Now, here's my attempt to analyze it as an author:

I think with bad boy romances, or a-hole alphas, is that they are mouth wateringly gorgeous, have their choice of women as playboys, and it ties into the female reader's fantasy of taming someone like that, that she'd be The One he'd give up his playboy lifestyle for. Some writers do make them too jerkish which will turn off readers, but the basic fantasy is still there to lure many past that point. Also, the woman who he'll wind up getting usually doesn't put up with his carp and is the first to reject him. She probably doesn't like him and lets him know. Those sparring matches are fun to read and is another lure to keep readers interested. Who doesn't want to cheer on the woman as she tells Hot Stuff not only no, but heck no!

With this book intro, there is no lure. The guy has not displayed any positive personality and doesn't view himself as anything to write home about to the ladies, yet right away he's objectifying girls and demanding they be pretty and smart. He's probably the most honest, true to life character, but he's unlikable at this point. Like others have mentioned, he needs a save the puppy scene or a display of vulnerability that makes the reader view him sympathetically, then they can wince when he does the immature guy thing at the bar while still hoping he sees the light and becomes a better human being. There's a little bit of him talking himself up to ask the woman, but too much else in his head that negates that small vulnerability.

If he took another drag on his weed (which fixes the issue one person pointed out of his high lasting too long) to gain the courage to go up to her, and his self thinking was more about how average he looked, what was he thinking of approaching a pretty girl, but the new high gave him false bravado to do it, that would shift him into sympathetic light I think.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

Guy Riessen said:


> However, you seem very clear that THIS cover is not lit fic -- what did you think the genre is? What genre market do you think is excitedly clicking the thumbnail and being disappointed when they find out the book is lit fic?
> 
> If the blurb is turned into something exciting for lit fic readers, the new cover will only help, of course. But, I will still say, the clicks are coming with old cover--it's not the cover that is stopping conversion.
> 
> People are already clicking at a solid click-per-200-impressions-rate, and I believe they are expecting lit fic, but the blurb is not closing the deal.


I'm not sure what they're expecting based on the cover. I couldn't find any mention of the book receiving one click for every 200 impressions, only that he received 200 clicks between five ads on both Facebook and AMS. The cover may not have even been very determinate in someone clicking--the ad copy itself might have been. We also don't know who was being targeted, and by which metrics.

To me the cover came across as memoir, or perhaps something in the spirituality/ life affirmation category. When I think of literary fiction covers, I imagine something much more artistic and moody, stuff like this:
https://www.pinterest.com/zmaffitt/literary-fiction-book-covers/?lp=true

But I'm also curious why his book keeps getting portrayed as literary fiction. The writing itself seems more like a confessional/journal, and it's categorized as coming to age.

...

To the OP, I think it's important to make the distinction between a book that needed to be written for oneself, versus a book that needed to be written for others. I personally think yours falls into the former category, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, only that it inherently will be a much harder sale for other readers, because it isn't based nearly as much on their interests and needs.


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## Becca Mills (Apr 27, 2012)

crow.bar.beer said:


> But I'm also curious why his book keeps getting portrayed as literary fiction. The writing itself seems more like a confessional/journal, and it's categorized as coming to age.


Literary fiction can employ any writing style or tone, including confessional. That's one of the best ways into unreliable-narratorsville, actually. And coming of age is crazy-common as a literary fiction trope.


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## WHDean (Nov 2, 2011)

MonkeyScribe said:


> Yes, but very few _indie_ writers are selling any of it, so it doesn't help the OP in this case.


Most writers, including indies, aren't selling in genres either. And only a few short years ago indies weren't selling anything anywhere. There's no iron law saying you can't make it in general fiction or lit fic, and some people's success in a particular genre proves nothing either way: It doesn't show anyone's chances are better here or there.


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## LeonardDHilleyII (May 23, 2011)

Lorri Moulton said:


> I'm a fan of Klerner's cover. I prefer it over the existing one or the two alternatives.


 ^^ Totally agree.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Even knowing what's good/appropriate and what isn't good/appropriate is a skill that you need to develop. I've been studying covers for two years now, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I know less than ever. I get stupider by the day. The same with blurbs. Subtle choice can so change everything.

Knowing what's good/appropriate is important because if you pay for the wrong thing, no matter how excellent, then you won't get the intended results.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

I'm now un-locking.

I've gone through this thread with a chainsaw. Some posts that were helpful and informative were deleted but I felt it was necessary to bring the thread back on track. Let's keep it that way please.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Evenstar said:


> I'm now un-locking.
> 
> I've gone through this thread with a chainsaw. Some posts that were helpful and informative were deleted but I felt it was necessary to bring the thread back on track. Let's keep it that way please.


Yes, the conversation did get somewhat off track. This is me, now -->


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## ibizwiz (Dec 25, 2014)

Michael, and all those who have sincerely tried to help you solve your dilemma:

Covers don't sell books. Headlines don't sell books. Blurbs don't sell books. Reviews don't sell books.

These important things all serve to engage your prospective reader. They buy you a tiny slice of your prospect's brain for a lhalf minute at most of her time.

"Look Inside" doesn't sell the book either -- it can extend that attention and enhance the chance to demonstrate your gifts and craft as a storyteller.

What does sell the book? Why, the book does, of course.

Almost everyone in every kind of business thinks the goal is to get someone to fork over money for their book or widget. I've been at marketing for a freaking eon, friends, and have to explain that getting paid (many weeks later!) by a book sales platform is not the goal.

A product is only *really* sold when the buyer has consumed it, and is persuaded by the consumption experience that she'd buy another from the author.

Consider: if you publish a new title and by sheer luck and a serious expenditure of AMS and other promo cash, "sell" a thousand copies, you'd say that's a success, I'm sure.

It is, of course. It's just not the real success a truly successful creator or maker or producer should be aiming for.

You've made money, but not true sales. You won't know about those until you see readers of Book A buying Book B and then Book C.

Let's say you sell 1000 books. Let's say that 20% gave up on the book 20% of the way through, 20% tossed it after after reading 40%, and 20% wiped it off their Kindle reader after 60%. Let's further stipulate that of the 40% who finished the book, half did so to see if it was "good" only out of the human reluctance to throw away something they spent their small entertainment budget on. They did, and now won't buy another word from you. You, dear author, have, in the harsh world of meaningful numbers, sold 200 books, and been paid for 1000.

But surely, this is a win, right? Well consdier this: You publish another book in the same genre or series. 80% of the people you worked so hard to sell book A to will never buy Book B.

Yeah, you got some cash. But you wasted 80% of your hard work. Even worse, since getting *anyone* to buy a book in the cluttered catastrophe of the Kindle store is so hard, the 800 folks you somehow attracted and persuaded to buy Book A are never going to give you money again.

I promised you the magic sauce the other day. This is another element of it:

The sale only becomes a "real" one *at the moment you've turned a reader into a customer*.

The idea of treating a sale as a temporary victory at best is out of the box. But it is not an "opinion" because it can be demonstrated with hard cold numbers. Don't take my words for it. Read everything you can in here by Wayne Stinnett (on his book business).

All the established (financially) Indies tell us over and over to remember we are in a business, not an art show.

But the test of a viable, sustainable, paying your kids' way through university-type business, is not how much it's sold in the last four quarters, but *how many customers has it added*. And, for a pro marketer, how many customers it has lost.

OK. The gut-change most need to make is to understand that the cover, the headline, the description, the "look Inside" are NOT tools to sell a book, since that objective can only be measured when a given reader buys the second one.

No, these elements are merely ways to get you some selling space in the prospective reader's mind. How you exploit that little attention window is your main problem in getting the *real* sales process started -- and to earn a bit of cash from those taking a chance on you.

Again, consider: all these vital tools can turn off prospects even before they decide to "look Inside."

Selecting an image is minefield one. I empathize with Douglas Milewski who is drowning in this single-most aspect of prospect attraction.

Or is it? In a month or so we'll launch a set of test FBook ads that do NOT show the cover of the new Prequel Novel in our four book set. The four test ads will focus on what folks tell me is the single most "magnetic" feature of the complex graphic used for the full cover.

The ads will instead use a compelling headline and short summary copy to engage the busy FBook user. *The headline will play off the graphic in a mind-grabbing way*. The headline will tap into the prospect's emotions with a gut punch. When the prospect reader clicks through to our test landing page, they'll see the full cover and see how it reinforces the mental image they *already formed a few seconds earlier as they read the ad.* Instead of the cover being an"Oh! I like that!" or "Ugh! what a dumb looking cover!" exercise, they'll accept that the cover is the perfect way to respond to their emotions and expectations as they hit the landing page.

Or so we hope. 

Authors, even expert Facebook-savvy authors, are mostly relying on the cover choice they made months earlier to attract prospective readers to their landing page (or Amazon product page, which is NOT something we'll be doing.)

The cover that only half (if that) of your audience likes will actually kill off half your prospects. And you won't know, because the reasons for wide variations in click-thru-rates are still a black art.

I could go down the list: Headlines that shout a message few wish to hear, summaries that don't build on the interest created by the headline, descriptions that are, bluntly, boring and passionless and that do nothing to compell the reader to "Look Inside."

I'm out of time, and hungry, so I won't plow into these topics. I'll simply leave you with another dollop of the "sauce";

Your title, headline, summary paragraph, description and "Look Inside" can, collectively, cause 80% or more prospective readers to abandon your product page. Instead of dwelling on how to make these key elements better, ask yourself -- I mean ask hard -- what in the element is *preventing* the prospect from wanting to become one of your* customers*? Then clear that garbage out of her way! Facilitate, expedite, embolden her!

Authors who tend to think they need to sell "their" story, "their" vision, "their" world, are missing the basic (to me) point:

It's the lead character's story, her or his vision, and his or her world. The lead character(s) came into possession of all this the moment the author said "I'm done" and pressed the publish button in KDP.

Before the first copy is sold, the characters are in control.

Every bit of imagery or text in your sales effort must serve the character's persona and experience, not yours.

And finally, since I cannot afford another divorce at the mo and need to quit, I offer these simple guidelines as you critique your sales pitch, my own takeaway from five decades of this utterly wasted life:

Images attract the eyes
Headlines engage the mind
Copy moves the heart
and the 
Call to action 
- invites participation
- emboldens them to take the first step
- creates the expectation of being alive in your lead character's world, and sharing her adventure.

Many of you practice these or similar dictums, I'm sure. But they are extremely useful in showing yourself where your pitch has descended into BS. Hey! I would know!


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## Dpock (Oct 31, 2016)

ibizwiz said:


> The sale only becomes a "real" one *at the moment you've turned a reader into a customer*.


That's the final question we all must ask ourselves (do our "readers" become customers?). For some of us, it may already be answered if an otherwise "successful" promotion didn't move the entire shelf and improve our rankings across the board.

I've studied many BB promotion threads. I'm often surprised at the number of authors who experience brief, almost delirious spikes in sales which have NO effect on the author's back catalog, where you often find titles ranking in the millions. A month later even the promoted title is similarly ranked. In this case, the high numbers from a "successful" BB can obscure the truth -- the author failed to find an audience.

It doesn't provide definitive proof, but it's a clue.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Finding an audience is where I have a disagreement with folks who say, "stick to one genre and don't hop around." That works if you pick up readership there, but if you fail to connect, then you've failed to connect. In some ways, it's like saying, "I want to skip all the lessons that I learned and go straight to the benefits." Sadly, you can't learn without learning. I believe that hopping around not only develops you into a better writer, because it forces you to develop new writing skills, but it increases your chance of finding a niche where you do connect, or discover an area where you have fun.

I myself don't know where that line is between hopping around and holding steady. It naturally must be different for every writer. [Did I just contradict myself? Sue me.]


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## ibizwiz (Dec 25, 2014)

> I've studied many BB promotion threads. I'm often surprised at the number of authors who experience brief, almost delirious spikes in sales which have NO effect on the author's back catalog, where you often find titles ranking in the millions. A month later even the promoted title is similarly ranked. In this case, the high numbers from a "successful" BB can obscure the truth -- the author failed to find an audience.


A succinct and important insight, Dpock. It mirrors on the backside of promoting what I've learned on the front side, where the author is lectured to death about "discovery" of the thing by readers. Many try to solve this by writing in popular genres, or copying cover ideas, or using keywords that their competing authors (in that genre) are bidding up in AMS.

Let me suggest that the problem is not the discovery of the book, but the discovery of its potential reader base. One of the reasons we stress over and over the importance of having your own subscriber base and newsletter is that this group has taken the trouble to become your baseline audience.

OK, but most do not have a list of 5K to 55K subs. What do you do in that case? Douglas Milewski gets it: you have to work to "discover" where your lifetime audience members are hiding. Happily, one need not jump around willy-nilly; there's a rational and cost-effective way to aggregate these folks in a reasonably short period of time.

Amazon is no help in this, the most essential stage of promotion. AMS is not a tool intended to connect you with a reader base; it's a tool intended to disconnect you from your money.

Gurus tell us that Amazon is the best place to sell because there are 100s of thousands of readers searching there on any given day. These readers tend to have their mind made up as to their tastes. Or, and no one I know of has measured this yet, a large portion of those Amazon "searchers" were sent to 'Zon by a Facebook or other ad! They are after a specific title, and it isn't yours. For your new book, Amazon is not a place to assemble a reliable micro-audience.

It's likely that on any given day, there are at least 100 potential readers on Facebook for every Amazon searcher. If your book is topical, the number may be higher. There are millions on the other social media platforms, too, but these cannot be efficiently reached.

On Facebook, you can still build a list of reiiable readers. On Facebook, you can build a reader group for your books. Using cheap Facebook ads, you can sell your book on your own webpage, direct, and capture the reader's email, something Amazon will never allow. Oh, and get your money immediately, instead of waiting an average of ten weeks.

Find an audience that relates to your book. Then secure its fealty with the next book. Do what Wayne Stinnett does -- just use the new tools to do it.

If you build a reliable reader base, then "discovery" of the next book takes care of itself.


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## BWFoster78 (Jun 18, 2015)

Douglas Milewski said:


> Finding an audience is where I have a disagreement with folks who say, "stick to one genre and don't hop around." That works if you pick up readership there, but if you fail to connect, then you've failed to connect. In some ways, it's like saying, "I want to skip all the lessons that I learned and go straight to the benefits." Sadly, you can't learn without learning. I believe that hopping around not only develops you into a better writer, because it forces you to develop new writing skills, but it increases your chance of finding a niche where you do connect, or discover an area where you have fun.
> 
> I myself don't know where that line is between hopping around and holding steady. It naturally must be different for every writer. [Did I just contradict myself? Sue me.]


I like this reasoning.

I like it mainly because it tells me to do what I really, in my heart, want to do anyway, but I do like this reasoning.


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## &quot;Serious&quot; ... but not really (Aug 14, 2017)

Douglas Milewski said:


> Finding an audience is where I have a disagreement with folks who say, "stick to one genre and don't hop around." That works if you pick up readership there, but if you fail to connect, then you've failed to connect. In some ways, it's like saying, "I want to skip all the lessons that I learned and go straight to the benefits." Sadly, you can't learn without learning. I believe that hopping around not only develops you into a better writer, because it forces you to develop new writing skills, but it increases your chance of finding a niche where you do connect, or discover an area where you have fun.
> 
> I myself don't know where that line is between hopping around and holding steady. It naturally must be different for every writer. [Did I just contradict myself? Sue me.]


It is a bit of a dichotomy - do this - don't do that ...

Know what you want to write and why dude.

This is a marketing centric board. So you are going to get a lot of answers related to that.

... litigate? ...  that was funny. Sounds like you may have made a decision ...


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