PortableHal
04-26-2011, 12:25 AM
It can be tough getting a book review if you're self-published. It can be really tough getting a review of a few short stories...or, at least, that's been my experience.
I love post-apocalyptic s-f stories and, one day, I decided to write one. My wife/writing partner joined in and we finished it a few days later. We polished an older, already-published s-f piece, added a third story to the mix, and put the three together as a 99-cent mini-collection on Amazon. We published the group as After Things Went Bad.
This was right at the end of 2010 and, as you remember, e-reader sales went nuts about then but not for us. If there was a number of sales less than zero, that's how many downloads we'd have sold. I popped onto AW and offered free downloads of the collection to anyone who would review the thing -- good/bad/indifferent, just some response -- and one person took us up on it. Even at free, we couldn't drum up much interest.
We understood why. We're self-pubbed, no one knows who we are, there's been no publicity but... *sigh*
Then Sarah Nicolas came to AW, actively seeking self-published s-f material for Sift Book Reviews. According to the Sift website, the review team is an eclectic group (Sarah is an engineer-writer, while other members are a software engineer, a nanny, a psychiatrist-in-training, and a speech pathologist) and we were excited. Figuring they'd soon be swamped with submissions, we quickly e-mailed and offered our three-set of stories.
I think they have been swamped with submissions but Sarah gave our work a look, anyway. On Friday, she posted her review (right here (http://http://siftbookreviews.blogspot.com/)).
We know we still may not sell any copies of our stories -- but this review has made us SO happy....
I love post-apocalyptic s-f stories and, one day, I decided to write one. My wife/writing partner joined in and we finished it a few days later. We polished an older, already-published s-f piece, added a third story to the mix, and put the three together as a 99-cent mini-collection on Amazon. We published the group as After Things Went Bad.
This was right at the end of 2010 and, as you remember, e-reader sales went nuts about then but not for us. If there was a number of sales less than zero, that's how many downloads we'd have sold. I popped onto AW and offered free downloads of the collection to anyone who would review the thing -- good/bad/indifferent, just some response -- and one person took us up on it. Even at free, we couldn't drum up much interest.
We understood why. We're self-pubbed, no one knows who we are, there's been no publicity but... *sigh*
Then Sarah Nicolas came to AW, actively seeking self-published s-f material for Sift Book Reviews. According to the Sift website, the review team is an eclectic group (Sarah is an engineer-writer, while other members are a software engineer, a nanny, a psychiatrist-in-training, and a speech pathologist) and we were excited. Figuring they'd soon be swamped with submissions, we quickly e-mailed and offered our three-set of stories.
I think they have been swamped with submissions but Sarah gave our work a look, anyway. On Friday, she posted her review (right here (http://http://siftbookreviews.blogspot.com/)).
We know we still may not sell any copies of our stories -- but this review has made us SO happy....