One Thousand Stars

After two years and two months, nine books and two compilations, I've hit one thousand ratings on Goodreads*!   I consider this a bit of an achievement, since it's no easy task getting people to read a complete unknown self-publisher, though from a trade publishing point of view - when a new release can easily hit a thousand ratings in two months - it's nothing spectacular.  Heck, some books get a thousand ratings before they're even released!

At the same time, I'm still a "slow and steady" sales type.  To give an idea of relative successes, Goodreads recently posted an article about the Goodreads recommendation engine.  The most interesting point was this:

In late April, the Goodreads Recommendation Engine picked up the book. On average, a book needs to have several hundred ratings before it starts to be included by our algorithm. From that point forward, it became the dominant way that Goodreads members discovered the book. That's the blue section you see in the graph.

So even with Stray's 228 ratings, I have a long way to go to even start to be recommended.  The recommendation engines over at Amazon are even more complex (with participation in Select, sadly, being extra helpful).

With And All the Stars only two months into release, it's not really possible for me to say how successful it is or isn't.  It had solid sales on release as my small established audience picked it up and devoured it, and has now settled into a 1-2 books a day sales pattern.

It's very difficult to tell whether the decision to place the book on NetGalley was worth the expense.  I now have many more book blog reviews for And All the Stars than I have for all except Stray, and it's certainly a much more graceful and pain-free way to get the book out there available for reviewers than emailing reviewers individually.  I'm sure I've picked up a few readers thanks to the various reviews I've received (all but a couple of which have been positive or very positive) and there is a chance that the gradual weight of these reviews will combine into genuine "buzz".  But the impact is still absolutely nothing compared to the sales I receive by making Stray free every six months or so,  Periodically making Stray free remains my best way of picking up new readers, with a small fraction of Touchstone readers moving across to my other books.  I probably won't use NetGalley again unless something changes, and just enjoy the smaller amount of reviews I gain naturally.

Hunting is more or less on track to be released in February.  I've changed quite a lot since I wrote this particular book, and in the editing process have so far removed two extraneous characters and spent more time on worldbuilding.  Hunting is actually the first in a series of four books, but I'm in two minds about publishing the rest of them - there's a plot development in book two which some people will hate, book three is only half-written, and book four is this endless sprawling and self-indulgent mass.  So, lots of work if I want to put them out.

Next year will be catching up on sequels to earlier-released fantasy - Bones of the Fair, which is a companion to Champion of the Rose, and focuses on Aspen and a new character.  BotF is almost complete, but needs thorough editing work.  Then The Sleeping Life, which is a sequel to Stained Glass Monsters and about half-done.  I'll also consider whether or not to slot Wellspring (my magic as a non-transportable commodity book) in at this point.

After that I'll be back to writing fresh stuff - Pyramids of London for a start - I've been doing some elaborate mental worldbuilding for that one and am looking forward to getting some of it on the page.  Then another book started thanks to Goodreads - talking about books generally gives me ideas about books, and in this case I ended up deciding I wanted to do some form of Space Opera MMO trapped in a virtual reality novel.  Very over the top space opera with space elves and a beginning section called The Drowned Earth and, well, I'm trying not to think about it all too much because I'll start writing it and throw my schedule out again.

I've actually written quite a bit of space opera/space adventure, but for some reason I always hit a wall and stop around chapter 12.  There's Surrogate, my "space naga smut book".  And Runes, which is rather plainly influenced by Andre Norton's Forerunners - lots of space archeology and ancient working tech.  And Solitary Stars, where a survey pilot gets kidnapped off on a hunt for, again, a Forerunner planet.  And then there's the one which I think I actually called Space Elves, with blue-skinned, pointy-eared people insisting on fighting duels all over the place, much to the dismay of this long-suffering space station cop.

I love non-scientific, over-the-top space adventure, but damned if I ever seem to finish it.

Anyways, here's to the next thousand stars**!

* [26 of these ratings are for a book which I haven't even released yet, but oh well.]
**[Technically it's more like four and a quarter thousand stars, but that's not so catchy a title.] *

Opinion, Territory and Perception : the idea of bullying on Goodreads

I sit in two worlds on Goodreads.  I came to the site as a reader, though I used it primarily for looking up information about books. When I self-published, I had my account converted to an author account, ran a few giveaways, and slowly developed a taste for tracking which books I've read.  I joined some groups, though I'm only an occasional poster.  I continue to run giveaways, and occasionally my readers will find me there and friend or follow me, but primarily I use the site as a reader, following the feed of other readers whose reviews entertain me, or who analyse books on points I'm interested in, such as treatment of women.

Just this past week I've particularly felt the "feet in both camps" nature of being both a reader and writer as a site ironically named GRBullies started receiving attention.  This site collects the personal information of various readers who use Goodreads (addresses, photographs) in, it claims, an attempt to name and shame bullies who harass authors on Goodreads.  This site greatly resembles (and also alludes to) an earlier incident where an author had posted a similar collection of information on her blog about a reader (Google "Selection Debacle" for further information).

The end result of that incident was the reader – someone who had posted a very measured, balanced review (of a book which wasn't even the attacking author's book) – stopped using Goodreads for some time.

Links to the GRBullies site have been appearing on various writer forums I read, often followed by a mix of comments from people who have no problem with Goodreads, and people who call it a cess pit.  I've also been watching the discussion direct on Goodreads, because the people named on GRBullies…?  Most of them are readers whose reviews I've been following for the past year or so.

I can't claim to have a thorough knowledge of everything which happens on Goodreads, so I can only state what I've observed about the experience of being an author there:

As an author:

*- There is an emphasis that the site is for readers to track their books and discuss them. There are opportunities as an author to promote, but they are within strict boundaries to prevent promotion from becoming intrusive.  There is a clear message to me that this is reader territory, not author territory.

*- I'm not actively notified of new ratings and reviews, though if I want to read them I can track them down via an author dashboard which shows me total numbers.

*- I have a little over 700 ratings (nearly 200 of which include text commentary), which range from 1 star to 5 star.

*- No-one has called me names.  Not everyone has liked my books.  Some have said what didn't work for them in a blunt or snarktastic manner. Not everyone is polite, or coats their opinion of my writing in syrup, but I have never felt even remotely bullied.

*- The Goodreads administration discourages authors from commenting on their own reviews – a pop-up message appears warning you off when you start, though it still permits you to comment.

Occasionally there have been incidents which I have watched from the sidelines.  The majority of these have involved comments appearing on a review which amounted to "your opinion, you have it wrong".

This is where "territory" is triggered.  Everyone's perception of a book is different.  There are many popular books which one person will love and another will think is dull or boring or sexist.  The review is their own personal opinion of a book, their 'mental territory'.

Comments on reviews, even comments which disagree with the review, aren't automatically treated as bad.  A comment phrased as "I didn't react to that character's treatment in that way, and so ended up liking the book a great deal more than you did.  Do you think the author was trying to deliberately comment on prejudice there?" is a relatively neutral engagement in a conversation while "You're reading it wrong; are you blind?" will be received as an attack, not an engagement to discussion.

Many comments like the latter result in other readers defending the reviewer's right to have their own reaction to the book, even if it doesn't conform to the commenter's.  Sometimes the exchanges escalate and (given that Goodreads has such an enormous number of users) sometimes matters will descend to name-calling.  Some name-calling comes from inexperienced users, who are often corrected by community members.  Sometimes the name-calling stands and matters escalate further.  Usually the dissenting commenter is repeatedly told to go write their own review rather than argue with the first reader's opinion in the first reader's 'territory'.

Who is the bully here?  The person insisting someone's personal reaction to a book is wrong, or various connected readers quick to defend the territory of reader opinions?

One particular point of contention which has developed over the past year is the use of "author behaving badly" shelves to keep track of authors who have engaged in arguments with reader opinion.  As an author I would feel tremendously uncomfortable finding myself on one of those shelves!  So far I've managed to avoid it by remembering three simple points:

*- Goodreads is a place for readers to express their opinions about books. 

*- Not everyone will have the same opinion, even about my favourite books in the whole world.

*- If I respect other people's opinions, they will generally accord me the same courtesy.

There are more than a million people using Goodreads.  They all have their own views on how polite they need to be when expressing their opinions.  I may occasionally be a little blunt expressing my own. But one thing I always manage to remember is that my opinion is only absolutely correct to me – and people are not bullies for insisting they be allowed to have their own.