Goodies I’ve found from chatting and cruising this week:

Sites

Kindle Spice – Only the Hottest Books for Your Kindle.  Pretty self explanatory.  They have some ads, but it seems to be exactly what it says.  And their logo, a play on the Kindle logo, is cute.

Time Management Ninja – Clean, well laid out, and not overly complicated.  Good site.

The Jeep Diva.  A new-to-me romance review site.  Vanessa enjoys reading, Paranormal Romance | Erotic Romance (ménage, paranormal or contemporary) | M/M Romance |  Apocalypse (love zombie apocalypse!) | Horror | Sci Fi Romance.  Rachel enjoys reading:  Paranormal Romance | Sci-Fi | Horror | Urban Fantasy.  But they will review (they say) almost anything interesting that comes their way, plus giveaways, interviews, guest posts and other events.

Hanging with Bells.  Another new-to-me review site.  Bells primarily reads Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy. Also enjoys reviews Contemporary Romance as well as Young Adult books.

Guilty Pleasures.  Third review site I’ve come across.  They say: “We read contemporary mainstream romances and erotic romances, paranormal romances and mysteries. HOWEVER, we are not  book snobs, if it looks interesting we will read it.”  So you should be able to find some good recommendations there for just about anything.

Interesting Posts/Articles

The 5 Worst Fantasy Novel Cliches

Prince Charming Is Kind Of A Jerk

Are Paperbacks Worth It? (An author discussion, but no reason readers can’t weigh in).

New to Me Indie Romance Authors

Michelle Hughes – Vampires

Melissa Smith – Paranormal Romance

Facebook Groups

Period Drama/Romance Movies

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2. A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland – Part II A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe) Finding Books – Part 1 This is Part 2 of a...

Mark was the one that pointed the nomination out to me, which is staggering, under the circumstances.  He noticed one of his contacts on Facebook talk about missing out on a CAPA nomination this year.  He remembered that the CAPAs are a big deal in the romance world, and flipped over to The Romance Studio’s website to check the nominations, and then almost broke his neck hurrying downstairs to tell me that Blood Knot had been nominated for Best Paranormal Romance, for 2011.

Sometimes I really do think he’s worth keeping…  :)

I actually missed all the announcements for this, which is the staggering part.  The nominations were announced on December 15th.  The winners in each category will be announced on February 14th — Valentine’s Day — next year.

The Romance Studio have done away with the separate “erotic” categories this year.  Erotic and “normal” paranormals are all in together (all other categories have also been blended, too).  I think this is significant:  Erotic romance has become mainstream and normalized.

I don’t for a moment expect to win.  Shiloh Walker is one of the nominees, just to start.  The rest of the nominees are a who’s who of paranormal romance authors in both legacy and epublished romance.  Interestingly, I’m one of only two indie authors who made the list of nominees.  I’m tickled pink about that, and in this case, being nominated really is honour enough.

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe)

Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

This is Part 5  (and the last) of a series:
Part 1:Romanceland Meltdown
Part 2: Finding Books – Part 1
Part 3: Finding Books – Part 2
Part 4: Assessing Books
Part 5: Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

(Series based upon a guest post at The Bookish Snob)

________________________

If you’re mining the Internet for everyone else’s opinions about the worth of a romance novel, in order to figure out whether you should buy it or not, it’s only fair that you contribute back to the system in order to keep it going for other readers, too.

Once you’ve read a romance, you should tell others what you think about it.

Romanceland is a changing world — if this series hasn’t convinced you, just wait a while and you’ll see for yourself, if you haven’t noticed already.  Once upon a time you may have thought it was the purview of the professional editors and reviewers to give a public opinion on the worth (or not) of a published book.

Not anymore.

Authors are publishing directly to the public now:  Directly to readers, and cutting out all middlemen.

That means word-of-mouth — readers talking to readers — is now the most effective means of sorting out the quality books.

You may think that adding your simple review or rating to the cacophony already out there will be a waste of time and energy, because no one is going to hear you or pay any attention.  You’re quite wrong, if that’s what you are thinking.  Your review or rating may not get a direct reaction.  You may not get anyone commenting or responding to you.  It’s highly unlikely the author will thank you — authors are taught or trained by hard experience to stay far, far away from reviewers and reviews to avoid publicity nightmares.

However your rating and/or review will be noticed.  I’ve used this analogy before, because it’s an exact one:  I’m a dedicated blogger, and my blog posts get incredible amounts of traffic every day.  Yet I consider myself lucky if I get one or two comments a month on my blog.  But I know that people are reading and reacting to the posts because my stats tell me they are.

It’s the same with reader ratings and reviews.  You may not get any direct reaction at all, ever.  But your review will be read.  The author will absolutely read it, and if your review is a positive one, I promise you the author will be pathetically grateful.  Then, every single potential buyer who considers the book will read your review once you’ve posted it.  You will have influence over their buying decision, and depending on how you write your review, your influence could be small or large.  Your rating will also form part of the average star rating for the book.

Every time you post a review and rating for another romance book, you’re adding to the weight of information out there for other readers to find.

What goes around, comes around.  Romanceland is becoming a true community of readers.  It’ll pay off big time to contribute meaningfully to that community.

Review on Amazon, even if you didn’t buy there

You only have to write one review, then you can copy and paste it to all your favourite review locations.

Amazon should absolutely top that list.

You’re using Amazon as a primary search tool for book titles, and as an assessment database, too.  Putting your review and rating on there is only fair.

There’s a small bonus to adding your review to Amazon, too.  People can rate your review for its usefulness.  So you can get a little feedback on your reviewing!

Once you’ve pasted your review and rated the book on Amazon, consider adding the review to all the “biggies”.  You can pick and choose amongst your favourite booksellers and review sites:

• Barnes & Noble.com
• Kobo.com (which has the potential now of becoming the next Amazon, thanks to the recent Japanese buy out)
• The bookseller where you bought the book, if they allow reader reviews.
• Goodreads
• Shelfari
• Google Books
• The book’s page on Facebook
• Any reader groups you belong to
• Your own blog, if you have one, or your Facebook page
• A rating line and link back to the review on Twitter

 A review is better than just a rating

Many review sites and booksellers will let you just rate the book and forego the review.  If you’re not good at stringing words together, it might be tempting to avoid writing a review and just click on a star rating and consider your contribution done.

You’ll be short-changing the system if you don’t write a review as well.

No one is expecting perfect prose for reader reviews.  You’ve been reading enough of them yourself to know that they’re not always grammatically perfect, or even close to well-written.  Sometimes even the spelling sucks big time, and if you can pick up on that much, you know you won’t embarrass yourself with your own review, right?

You also don’t have to write pages and pages.  A short paragraph is all you need, explaining why you enjoyed the book — or why not.

Your review, however, should be considered.  If you absolutely hated the book, try very hard to analyse why you hated the book and state it in objective terms in the review.  Don’t just verbally puke all over it and walk away.  That’s not going to help the next reader figure out if the book might still work for her.

It’s also not going to help the author.  If you think the author isn’t going to try to understand why you didn’t like it, again, you’re wrong.  Authors always read their reviews, even the bad ones.  Especially the bad ones.  And yes, they listen.  If enough readers are complaining about the same weakness in a book, you bet the author is going to fix it next time around.  Especially indie authors, who are writing directly for readers.  They need feedback.  So make it constructive feedback.

Your reviews for great books should be just as constructive and considered.  What made it so great?  What works so well in the book to make it fabulous?  Readers will want to know why it’s such a great read — they will want proof that it’s a winner before they buy it.  And the author will want to know what works well so they can repeat it in future books.

Use A Plain Text Editor

Write your review in a plain text editor like Notepad.  Don’t use Word or Wordperfect, because these programs add a lot of hidden coding to your text, so when you cut and paste to websites, all that coding goes with it and can completely screw up your pasting.  Using Notepad ensures there’s no hidden crap, just text.  If you want to use features like Spellcheck and Grammar check, then you’ll have to use a full text editor program like Word, but paste the text over to Notepad once you’re done, then save the file in Notepad as a text file, and shut it down.  Open it again, and then copy and paste to websites.  You’ll have got rid of all the hidden codes this way.

__________

This is the final post of this series.  You now have a full set of tools and a good collection of resources for keeping up with the shifts and upheavals in Romanceland.  The evolution of the romance industry is ongoing and changes will keep happening for quite a while before anything that looks like stability will appear — if it ever does.  In order for you to keep finding the very best romance novels to suit your tastes and preferences, you need to stay on your toes, and keep looking in unexpected places.

Romanceland isn’t the same place it was even a year ago, and it won’t look this way next year.  You have to keep redrawing your map…or simply throw the map away and enjoy the freedom of exploring new territory every day.

Have fun!

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2. A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland – Part III A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe) Finding Books – Part 2 This is Part 3 of a...
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My erotic urban fantasy MMF romance, Blood Knot, has been nominated for vampire book of the year by the reviewers at The Romance Reviews.

Now the voting begins.  Yes, I’m trawling for votes — as this is a “book of the year” vote rather than a book of the week, or weekend or month, or whatever.  Those ones I gave up asking for a while ago.  There’s just too many of them.  But for this one….pleeeeaaaase?  It’d look so pretty on my resume.  :)

Actually, joking aside, this is a very nice tip of the hat toward Blood Knot, because it’s an indie-published title.  Even getting the nomination at all is a massive acknowledgement for me and indie authors in general.

To vote, you will be asked to register, but you can get around that by signing in with your Facebook profile.  Scroll down the the erotic vampire category, and Blood Knot is the second from the top.  Click here to vote …with my thanks!

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A Toolkit And Compass for Romanceland

Because All The Roads Are Being Re-Built (Maybe)

Finding Books – Part 2

This is Part 3 of a series:
Part 1:Romanceland Meltdown
Part 2: Finding Books – Part 1
Part 3: Finding Books – Part 2
Part 4: Assessing Books
Part 5: Contributing To Word-of-Mouth

(Series based upon a guest post at The Bookish Snob)

________________________

Last post, we explored all the ways of using Google Alerts results to mine the Internet for useful blogs, sites and newsites, and the bounty they give up:  romance titles for your growing list of potential books to buy.

Here are even more resources to tap.

Amazon

Even if Amazon doesn’t have every single romance title published available for sale on its virtual shelves (and if it doesn’t, it’s only by a gnat’s whisker), it comes a lot closer to 100% than any other bookseller in the world.  For this reason, and one other, Amazon is one of the most advanced search tools on the Internet.

The other reason Amazon outranks any other publisher, bookseller or database in the world when it comes to searching for books, is that readers, publishers, authors…anyone…can categorize and tag the books that Amazon offers for sale.  In other words:  keywords.

And those keywords are searchable.

You may not like shopping via Amazon.  But searching via Amazon is hard to argue with.

With your keyword groups in hand, head over to Amazon, and in the Departments drop down box, select “Books” and hit the “go” button.

Underneath the search bar, you’ll get a row of menu items, including the “Advanced Search” link.  Click on that.

You’ll come up with a screen called “Book Search” and the first row of the range of fields you can fill in is…keywords.  J

Don’t add any other conditions than your keywords.  You’re not trying to narrow down the range at this stage (quantity, remember?).  Just add your keywords, separated by commas, and hit enter.

You’ll come up with a list of titles that may be surprisingly long or short.  If you think your list is too short, try searching again, and dropping off one of your keywords — whichever one is the least critical in your opinion.

For each title that pops up in the search, open up that book’s page (use the right hand mouse button to open the book up in a new tab, so you can save the search page and come back to it later).  Have a quick look at the blurb, etc, and add the book to your list if it makes your interest level twitch at all.

Also check out the books listed under the “Frequently Bought Together” titles and add them to your list, if they beckon in the slightest.

Then check the books listed under the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….” section.  Books under this section are often similar, but not always.  A quick look at the blurb will tell you if you can add them to your list or not.

And don’t forget, for each book that you click through to, you should also check their “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….” sections for similar types of titles.

And start adding titles to your list.

Repeat this with all of your keyword groups.

Reader groups

There are romance reader groups all over the Internet.  And I will give you a list of places where you can start looking for like-minded peer groups in a minute.

But there are strong pros and cons to joining reader groups of which you should be aware before signing up.

Pros

A romance reader group that works well is a fabulous resource for word-of-mouth about great romance novels, changes in the industry, help, support, friendship, and fun.  When reader groups work well, they’re fabulous places to hang out.  And you will hear of so many great books you will never catch up!

If you can find a group that is “closed” (there is some sort of formal subscription process) and has a stable membership, you’ll find yourself making friendships that last years.  If the group caters to a small niche category that you love and adore, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

Reader groups that function well bring all the best qualities of each of its members to the group.  The knowledge of each member provides a pool of information that all members draw upon for a unique resource that provides support for the group as a whole and enhances it.  A strong coordinator/manager is a must.

Cons

Many “reader” groups are over-subscribed, or open, and subject to spam, hackers, or the abuse of authors who use the group as promotional platforms, to the detriment of free discussion and fellowship.  In the very large reader groups, you will hear of many, many romance titles via promo posts from authors or promotional companies, but not much else.  These larger groups are rarely niche groups.  They cater to larger divisions of romance (e.g. “erotic romance” or “paranormal romance”).

Smaller niche groups have tiny memberships and are often moribund through lack of activity or current interest in the niche.

All groups may also be subject to bias via group pressure.  If the group is aligned with a website or publisher, then discussion will be limited to that website’s reviews, or publisher’s books.  There may also be more subtle or political prejudices:  The group may have a bias against indie titles, or e-books, that isn’t apparent on the surface, but only via consistently bad reviews of anything other than New York published titles, for instance.

Even if none of the above occurs, groups sometimes break out into bickering and sniping, if there is one or two forceful members who don’t see eye-to-eye.  If these frictions are not resolved, groups can end up disbanded or deserted because members grow tired of the conflict.

—

Despite the downsides, there are more well-functioning groups than not.  Each group has a lifecycle and groups are forming and disbanding all the time.  You just need to find a group that works for you, if you think one would be useful for you.

Where to find Groups

Yahoo Groups – The grand-daddy of groups, Yahoo is still the one most people think of when they talk about “groups”.  Posts are delivered via email as a defaul, although you can check your group’s postings online if you want.  There are dozens, if not a hundred or more, romance novel-related groups on Yahoo.

Google Groups – Google took over the old Usenet bulletin board style groups, then added their own Groups on top.  One of the oldest writing groups on the usenet boards is still going on Google – rec.arts.sf.composition.  One of the problems with Google, though, is that the groups are semi-open, so hackers and spam is rife.  I’ve looked for romance novel groups there, but didn’t find any.  However, if usenet groups are your thing — and some people like them — then you may consider the idea of creating one of your own in your favourite niche.

Facebook – Whatever you think of Facebook, there’s no denying the numbers it commands.  It’s #2 on Alexa (Google is #1).  And Groups is Facebook’s next “thing”.  If you’re a member, go to your home page, and type your keywords into the search bar at the top.  There’s potentially a group page will pop up with your keywords.  If not, drop the least critical keyword off and try again.  Sooner or later you’ll end up with a group showing up in your search results.  I guarantee that group will be talking about romance books in your niche.  And you can always ask for recommendations, too — and brace yourself for impact.

__________

Next:  Assessing your List Of Potentials

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I’m almost scared to start blogging again.  There’s a small mountain of news, tasks, and dust to blow off the site.

Not to mention about 800 photos we took in Australia that I should really comb through to share the best of with you, that I never really had time to upload while I was on the road.

But I have to start somewhere, so I’m just diving in.  I figure it’ll all sort itself out as I go along and if I don’t start now, I’ll never start, y’know?

So, let’s start with good news.  From my in-box while I was away:

Blood Knot, my erotic paranormal MMF romance, was selected for Coffeetime Romance’s Reviewer Recommended Award.  The award recognizes outstanding writing styles in all book types and genres. The reviewer who nominated Blood Knot told me:  “Your book has received this award because I feel it is above and beyond a 5 Cup Rating. I was simply amazed at your writing talent!”

To check out the award nomination, click here.  The original 5 cup review is here.

______

Fatal Wild Child also received a very nice 4-star review from Coffee Time Romance, that included the magic words: “This is one of the best romantic suspense novels I have read this year.”  That was an email worth opening!

I’ve posted an excerpt of the review on the book’s page (here), and of course pasted it all over Facebook and Twitter. :)

_____

Fatal Wild Child emerged onto the secondary markets while I was away.  You can now buy it at Barnes & Noble, Apple and Sony and I’ve added buy links to the book’s page.

_____

Smashwords will soon be adding mobile apps to the list of formats they offer readers, which means you will be able buy formats for Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and HP’s WebOS.  I’ve been reading my books on my cellphone for years.  It appears that many other readers have been, too, if Smashwords are making this move to provide formats for mobile phones.  In Japan, reading on your cellphone is the norm, which is why ebook covers are so small and simple.  With the first surge of popularity in ebook reading passing on and early adopters are already looking around for the next cool gadget to play with, perhaps there might be a secondary wave of movement toward cellphone reading as people merge their handheld devices into one convenient all-in-0ne handheld.

____

That’s it for now.  I’ll be back, I’m sure.  As soon as I hit “publish” I’m sure I’ll think of something else…!

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I’m geeky enough to get a kick out of designing cool stuff like toolbars, and this one made my day.  You can now download my very own toolbar and install it in your Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers, and besides it letting you keep up with my latest news, it will also let you stay on top of your own Facebook, Twitter and Gmail accounts, plus, there’s an Amazon button that will let you add any book you find, anywhere on the Internet, to your Amazon wishlist.  You don’t have to go to Amazon to do it.  You just tap the button.

Very, seriously, cool.

Click here to install, or click on the toolbar image, below.

Have a great Sunday!

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