[Display site] ViralBestseller

Candance:
this is not for everyone (more for those that have exhausted all means and have shelved their work "given up" and have wonderful stories to tell).

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If someone has "given up" on trade publishing, then what does your service offer that is better or more worthwhile than going down a self-publishing route?

Your business model (and correct me if I'm wrong) seems predicated on somehow convincing a trade publisher through the power of viral marketing that a book is worth publishing. However, authors who go down this route with you are putting their book out in eformat (exactly as they could via self-publishing) without getting any financial reward for it. They are therefore losing first publication rights on their work, not getting any sales unless and until they hit 5,000 downloads (and even then, it's not clear how much they could potentially make) and all in the hope that maybe a trade publisher might believe that those 5,000 downloads haven't tapped out the entire market for the book.

Surely you can see just why this raises serious concerns?

Please understand that we are not saying this to be mean or unpleasant, this is a site that is designed to enable authors to ask questions so that they can make informed decisions. Given that you came here specifically to promote your service (and understanding that you are busy trying to get it up and running), it would be helpful if you could answer some of the questions or respond to some of the points raised.

MM

Momento Mori said:

Firstly, how do you determine whether someone has 5,000 followers worldwide? Do you need those people to be following you on Twitter or Facebook or is it something else?

Secondly, publishers do deals on a territory by territory basis. What they care about is how many books they can sell in that territory. 5,000 copies worldwide is not going to be financially attractive to them.

Thirdly, followers do not equate to sales. If an author had self-published a book and said they'd made 5,000 sales in a month, then a trade publisher will probably take notice of that. However here ViralBestseller is making work available for free, so there's no way of determining whether someone has written something that the public will pay for. Anyone will read something for free or which is very cheap.

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This.

There are many things to question here, but this, IMO, is the main issue.

I never cease to be fascinated by how frequently something that's presented as a revolutionary! new! paradigm! is actually an idea that has been tried many times before, often with negligible success.

- Victoria

Momento Mori said:

Copyright runs from the moment your work is complete - not the moment you started writing it. By making this suggestion, you are actually compromising an author's copyright protection period (i.e. if an author started writing a book 10 years ago, you're knocking 10 years from their copyright protection). My suggestion would be to get a US qualified publishing lawyer to advise you on this and quickly.

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Given that copyright runs for the author's life plus seventy years, the only way I could knock ten years off the term of copyright would be by dying ten years prematurely. If that's what an author is worried about, he should quit smoking.

Also, given that copyright flows from the pen, the moment I write the first word on the first page, that word is copyrighted.

There are a number of serious concerns with Viral; this isn't one of them.

Having said that, the requirement for copyrighting/putting the (c) copyright symbol on the works is bizarre.

Momento Mori said:

Copyright runs from the moment your work is complete - not the moment you started writing it. By making this suggestion, you are actually compromising an author's copyright protection period (i.e. if an author started writing a book 10 years ago, you're knocking 10 years from their copyright protection). My suggestion would be to get a US qualified publishing lawyer to advise you on this and quickly.

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James D. Macdonald said:

Given that copyright runs for the author's life plus seventy years, the only way I could knock ten years off the term of copyright would be by dying ten years prematurely. If that's what an author is worried about, he should quit smoking.

Also, given that copyright flows from the pen, the moment I write the first word on the first page, that word is copyrighted.

There are a number of serious concerns with Viral; this isn't one of them.

Having said that, the requirement for copyrighting/putting the (c) copyright symbol on the works is bizarre.

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Oh MM, how I love you. But Uncle Jim's right here.

"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

Bold mine.

Copyright exist when the figurative pen meets paper.

"Copyright in a work created on or after January 1, 1978, subsists from its creation and, except as provided by the following subsections, endures for a term consisting of the life of the author and 70 years after the author’s death."

Bold mine.

It doesn't matter when you created the work, it only matters when you die.

That said, I concur with my fellow AWers on the other concerns regarding this "agency."

Even if a big five company publishes your book - the author still has to do the sales themselves unless they have already proven themselves as money-makers.

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This is false.

Yes, you see it all the time all over the web.

It's false where-ever you see it.

5,000 verified downloads accompanied by at least 2,000 positive reviews within approx. 90 days

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Good luck with that. I'm putting down my marker now on the number of books that meet that criteria at Viral over the course of the website's life: I'm betting on zero.

Look, I'm certain that their hearts are in the right place. The problem is that experience with movies or music doesn't translate over to publishing. They're similar in some respects, but the differences are bigger than the nice folks from Viral apparently imagine.

FWIW -

Agents represent books, meaning they select the best they've been offered, then go out and actively try and sell those books to publishers.

Represent =/= "stick book on website and let it gain steam"

You're taking a non-active approach (i.e. NOT representing the book). What makes this any different than the hundreds of other display sites out there? And in what universe can you guarantee a book deal that you don't plan to publish yourself?

Even real agents who belong to AAR can't guarantee a book deal, certainly not one on par with what the author or agent feels they "deserve". They do the best they can to negotiate the best deal they can, but in the end, not all books get published.

Even if you don't think you're publishing the books submitted to you, by encouraging others to post said books to Twitter and their own blogs or Facebook, you're telling those others to publish the books, therefore damaging the author's rights.

How do you expect to sell something that gains popularity by being posted to, say, 10,000 blogs and 2,000 FB feeds? Add in the friends and Twitter followers of all those who've done the posting and passed on the links, and you could end up with a million views and a dead property.

James D. Macdonald:
Given that copyright runs for the author's life plus seventy years, the only way I could knock ten years off the term of copyright would be by dying ten years prematurely. If that's what an author is worried about, he should quit smoking.

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Heh - fair point and well made. I was thinking more from the POV of the author's estate than the individual author, i.e. a Confederacy of Dunces scenario, given that authors aren't allowed to submit themselves but need someone else to submit for them. It's what happens when I'm typing while I'm thinking and I should have been more clear in that. My bad.

I love you too, Little Ming.

MM

Password no longer works.

Candance said:

Thank you all so much for the feedback. Much success to you all.

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Are you going to respond to the points that have been raised? I assume the fact the password no longer works means you're changing things around, which can only be a good thing.

Momento Mori said:

Heh - fair point and well made. I was thinking more from the POV of the author's estate than the individual author, i.e. a Confederacy of Dunces scenario, given that authors aren't allowed to submit themselves but need someone else to submit for them. It's what happens when I'm typing while I'm thinking and I should have been more clear in that. My bad.

I love you too, Little Ming.

MM

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Not that it's relevant to the immediate thread in progress, but the US copyright laws for works created and/or published before 1978 follow different laws then works after that date.

Just in case anyone cares.

I give Candance credit for staying courteous all through a very trying reality check. Whether it made much impression...we'll see.

Currier -- should be Courier --- was changed to Carrier.

Now it must be about a contagious disease.

(It's still Currier in the google cache pages.)

'Little' errors like misspelling a book title go a long way with some people. Imagine if a publisher spelled it Moby Deck.

Published on the internet is published. First rights have been used. I'm sure you, as an agent, know that reprint rights are of signifiantly less value than first rights, and typically a much harder sell to publishers.

So, what is the benefit to your clients to use first rights as a free online publication?

This whole "first rights" issue (which is really not an accurate way of describing the rights that are sold to a book publisher, anyway) is really a red herring. It isn't so much whether a book has been published before that publishers care about, it's whether a book has demonstrated that it can't cut it (by poor sales) or tapped out its market (by selling decently to well).

Publishers may be concerned about rights issues (i.e., are the rights really clear?) or make unflattering assumptions about a book that has been pseudo-published online, or just be prejudiced against badly-published books. But if they feel a book is viable and can make them money, they won't give a fig that it has been published--for whatever value of "published"--before.

- Victoria

2000 reviews? In ninety days?


Wow. Yeah, good luck with that indeed.

* Books, Downloads, Fans, Reviews and Days may be demonstrations and should not be considered actual data or results.

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Oh.

Stacia Kane said:

2000 reviews? In ninety days?


Wow. Yeah, good luck with that indeed.

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Looking on Amazon at books I would be willing to term viral bestsellers:
The Da Vinci Code has 4,012 reviews (has been out for over 8 years)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has 3,669 reviews (one day sales record holder, has been out for over 2 years)
The Help has 4,561 reviews (has been out for over 2 years)

So, a viral bestseller *can* run up over 2,000 reviews, given time.

However, to stay within the 90-day limit, I used advanced search on Amazon to find books published within the past 3 months. I did not count works that were already published in another format, since Amazon assigns these the reviews already accrued by the previous format. I sorted by popularity, used a threshold of 50 reviews, and went through the first 300 books returned in the results.

Amazon returned a list of 1,202,508 books published after May 2011. At a rough estimate, I'd guess over half of those were ineligible, being either pre-orders of books not yet published (no reviews) or new formats/editions of previously published works (pre-existing reviews).

No book reached 2,000 reviews. One book garnered over 1,000 reviews, and another had over 800. Most didn't come close to that. The new books I found that came closest to the 2,000 review target were:

Shattered: Dream Realms Trilogy #1 (Sophia Sharp): 87 reviews
Kill Me If You Can (James Patterson & Marshall Karp): 50 reviews
The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern OUR VERY OWN AWer!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!): 162 reviews
New York to Dallas (J. D. Robb): 87 reviews
The Look of Love: The Sullivans Book 1 (Bella Andre): 59 reviews
A Dance with Dragons (George R. R. Martin): 1,218 reviews
Stolen Life: A Memoir (Jaycee Lee Dugard): 859 reviews
The Art of Fielding (Chad Harback): 52 reviews
Now You See Her (James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge): 206 reviews
The Hunt: Big Bad Wolf Series (Heather Killough-Walden): 73 reviews
State of Wonder (Ann Pratchett): 304 reviews

Clueless, vicious, illiterate and unprofessional. Run like hell.

Candance? Get some therapy. And a writing tutor.

Unimportant said:

Rolkus, I'd be interested in seeing if that little rider has been there all along.... I suspect it won't be found in the cached version of the webpage.

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Wasn't there September 5th or before. This cached copy is from the 5th.

It's particularly bothersome because some of the fake books listed here, which aren't clearly marked as fake, say BOOK DEAL beneath them.

*goes for the mouthwash*

Shelley

I got a screenshot of that, just in case.

I'm saving LOTS of stuff to my hard drive over this one.