My God, It's Full Of Stars!

This week, I’m going to be a little more serious than usual. No idea why. I just am. And I want to talk about star ratings. No, I don’t want to discuss the relative merits of Justin Bieber or Katy Perry, fascinating as that might be; I’m talking about the graded star method many websites use to rate various products, but specifically as it pertains to indie authors, that aspect of the review system used by the mighty Amazon.

Sometimes feeling like I’ve accidentally wandered into a cosmologist convention, I keep hearing my fellow writers discussing star systems, conversations that range from the alleged importance of 5-Star ratings to dire warnings of the career damage caused by 1-Star ratings. There are even dark tales of jealous authors deliberately dropping a single star on the book pages of their competitors… a frankly bizarre behaviour, if true, since my admittedly collectivist-hippie-skewed moral compass informs me we’re less competitors than we are colleagues. My favourite star-related content is our own M. Edward McNally’s regular inclusion of 1-Star customer ratings for classic novels. The ratings, along with their concomitant cluelessness, are hilarious.

But let’s back up for a moment… as the actress said to the… oh, wait. No. Serious, remember? When I started writing music reviews for PopMatters, a large and very eclectic online pop culture magazine, unlike other similar outlets at the time, we didn’t do number ratings. I liked that. We were encouraged to really delve into the guts of whatever we were reviewing, blending journalistic facts with a more personal exploration of the music. I don’t regret my time writing for them one little bit. At the time, I was reading the thoughts of other music writers, many of whom debated the purpose of reviews: some arguing they were basically consumer guides and others championing the so-called “think piece” aspects of the form, and everything in between. If you’re interested, Robert Christgau is a great proponent and practitioner of the former (he literally names his reviews dating back to 1969 “Consumer Guides”), while the latter would probably be best personified by the late Lester Bangs (if you haven’t read him, do so, he’s great).

Now, I won’t claim I stopped writing for the site on any regular basis solely due to their introduction of number ratings, but I’m sure it was a factor when I decided to move on. They honestly felt arbitrary. Was my job to grade or rate, or was it to explore? Some might say both, and I’ve some sympathy with that position, but regardless, my own emphasis was very much on the latter. Why did it matter what number I assigned? Surely, the exploration of my reactions to the music, maybe some insight into the music’s roots or influences, comparisons with similar artists, were more valuable than a numerical rating… otherwise, why bother with the written review at all? I’ve never subscribed to the view, incidentally, that sees critics as failed artists, as something parasitic or even malicious. Oh, sure, some of them can be—music writing in particular can often be damn near toxic with snark—but at its best, the great review is complementary to the art it describes or eulogizes. It can and ought to be a symbiotic relationship.

So Amazon is in the business of selling books. They know the consumer likes to see a product quantified, so star ratings make sense for them. But for me—and I know I’m not completely alone in this—I want to hear about someone’s emotional engagement with a work. I want to know how it made them feel, what other things it reminded them of, whether plot- or character-driven, whether the language was robust or fragile, pretty or brutal. The last thing I really care about is some fairly arbitrary star ratings. Because they are arbitrary. I’ve heard writers complain about a 3-Star rating they just had, which suggests they think it means the book is considered mediocre. For what it’s worth, if forced at gunpoint to care, I’d make a comparison to the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, whereby a 60% rating is considered Fresh (as opposed to Rotten). Now, my math skills are as rudimentary as the reasoning abilities of a recently-defenstrated pygmy hedgehog, but even I can work out that 3 Stars is… uh … 60%. Right?

All of which is my roundabout way of saying: don’t sweat the numbers, read the reviews themselves—at their best, they’re far more crucial to an understanding of whether you will enjoy a work or not. And my fellow indie authors, unless you strongly suspect malice (and Amazon will remove reviews that are demonstrably vindictive or spiteful), try to ignore the numerical aspect of the review and really get to grips with the words themselves. They’re our stock-in-trade, after all, or we’d all be accountants instead. And, yeah, probably richer.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on June 8, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

The Power at Our Fingertips

In this week’s post, I want to demonstrate the power of what Mark Coker calls the “rise of the indie author collective” (The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success). Indies Unlimited is every bit a part of that rise, that revolution really, one that has eroded the power of traditional publishing and significantly democratized the entire process.

Now, there are as many tips and tricks out there for helping independent authors “maximize their brand” or “utilize the tools of the internet” as there are slightly dodgy-looking punters at a female mud wrestling contest, and the debate continues to rage over the effectiveness of reciprocal Facebook “liking” or Amazon “tagging” every bit as fiercely as it does over that of Mona’s standing moonsault and tilt-a-whirl crossbody press on Dolores back in the Fifth Round.

And I have no more answers to those questions than your average… well, dodgy-looking punter at a female mud… But enough of that; in the tradition of great pitchmen everywhere… I wanna tell ya about what works, folks!

On March 17, our colleague here at Indies Unlimited, the redoubtable Jim Devitt, showed us a neat if at-first-glance confusing trick. Well, confusing if, like me, you’re more than a little dense when it comes to the arcane ways of the mighty Amazon dot com. In his post, Jim explained a method by which you change what is known as the “category path” of your book on its Amazon page and effectively reduce its number of competitors by fine-tuning that path, or string. Now, I’m not going to completely humiliate myself by outlining each and every wrong turn I took after my initial wild misinterpretations of Jim’s instructions. Suffice it to say that, after a number of emails between Amazon and my heartbreakingly clueless self, I did manage to end up with two slightly more customized category paths. Read Jim’s post—including the comments section in which I also humiliate myself publicly (okay, sensing a theme here)—for a much better nuts-and-bolts explanation than I could honestly provide (I can do nuts, no problem, just not bolts).

But the point is that I did finally arrive at these two new paths, and noticed that in one of them in particular (Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > United States > States > New York > New York City), I was already ranked at #4. It so happened that someone bought my book that day and I noticed it move up to #2. Which is when it dawned on me that if I asked enough people to buy it over one short, frenzied period of time, there was a chance it could make the #1 slot, however temporarily, thus giving me a bone fide Amazon #1 Bestseller! The only question: how far ahead in Amazon’s mysterious ranking algorithms was the current #1 seller in that particular category path, and was it catchable? I didn’t know. But I wanted to find out.

So I called in all my favours from the boys downtown… well okay, from my slightly bemused and mainly bespectacled writing cohorts and colleagues from within various Facebook groups. Essentially begging them to buy my book, I even lowered the price, which is the equivalent of leaning into the passenger side window and flashing acres of cleavage while making kissy faces. Not a good look, in other words. And perhaps my lowest point to date as an independent writer was when I found myself with my finger poised over the Buy Now With 1-Click button… and clicked. Yes, I admit it here for the world to mock me with: I bought my own book. For which I later did penance by dragging razor wire through my spleen and driving carpet nails into my perineum.

But also, some very kind people, most of them my colleagues right here at Indies Unlimited, felt sufficient excruciating embarrassment sympathy for my plight that they dug deep and shelled out for my lonely little book. Cue a couple of tense hours refreshing the Amazon page and watching the ranking (what on earth did we do for fun before the internet? Torture the kids with crocodile clips and car batteries? Prank the neighbours with elaborate setups involving loud hailers, flamethrowers and wolverine feces? Oh wait, yeah, we read books), until… well, it worked. Just like that (if you doubt me, click on the embedded photo above).

I was gobsmacked. #1 in an admittedly gerrymandered category, but no matter. It was a real bestseller. Which is especially ironic, since it has never sold well, being both short and nonfiction; pretty much guaranteed niche market material. In fact, I don’t mind admitting that its usual overall ranking fluctuates somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000. And that brings me to another point: the book’s overall Amazon Kindle Store ranking peaked at around 22,000, which prompts me to ask: if a small number of near-simultaneous purchases is enough to lift one eBook hundreds of thousands of places in the Amazon lists, are the vast majority of eBooks really selling as well as we’ve been led to believe? Is this an example of the so-called long tail, and did I just witness my own book advance from its usual place partway down the tail to somewhere nearer the front… yet still essentially a part of the tail? Okay, we’re getting into areas outside my expertise, which is admittedly not difficult, but it’s nutrition for cogitation, don’t you think?

What I take from this, however, is that the power of social media and our potential for collective action gave me a bestseller, as it could give you a bestseller, and as much as an observer might accuse us of gaming the system, we still put in the effort and discovered it was possible. And that surely stands for something in a world in which the little guy often feels excluded by the arcane rules of gargantuan corporations; rules that appear only to benefit those already at the top. Hey, Coker’s right. We’re not so little after all, not when we’re many.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on March 30, 2010. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Entitled

Oh my god, okay, so there’s this thing, right? Did you hear? There are these people, just ordinary people like you and me except they got lucky because there’s this revolution going on and people are bulldozing the libraries all across America right now and taking apart those Barns’n'No-Bull stores or whatever they’re called, which is, ha, funny, because it’s like that saying about locking the barn door after… anyway, I gotta tell you this, it’s so cool, and you’ll never believe it, but back to these lucky folks, one of them is called Joe Konehead and there’s even this really young chick named Amanda Hawking (I think she’s the little sister of that handicapped spacegeek with the creepy computer voice), and they heard about this new book revolution, only they’re not books, they’re eBooks and, oh my god, LOL, this is so amazing, you gotta keep listening. So they made, like, more money than Jesus at a Casino thanks to these iKindles and MaxiPads and all the other eReaders that all these big companies are now making especially for the eBooks, and you know, here’s the thing, you can now go sell your eBooks on them since it’s so easy, anyone can do it…

What’s that? No, you don’t have to be like Walt Shakespeare or even that Dan Vinci & Co dude, you know? Seriously. You don’t need to worry about the writing. It’s not like your high school English class any more, with all those Mice and Mockingbirds and a bunch of hillbillies with weird names like Spartacus Lynch who sound like totally uncool racists, lol—you know, those classes everyone knew were stupid and wouldn’t help you in life in any way what-so-ever. No, it’s all done for you in the software, now, and you get it all formatted for you when you upchuck it to Amazon or whatever, or this other website called Crushwords that literally crushes up all your words and spits them out of an actual meat grinder along with a really helpful manual that you honestly don’t really need to read, and it’s so cool… only you don’t actually see it, it’s all done behind the scenes… although I don’t exactly know how they separate the bits of shredded paper from the ground beef afterward… but moving on…!

What’s that? Editing? Nah, Squishwords and Amazon do all that for you, you don’t need to bother with it because you’ll be busy rounding up new words to join together for your next book because it’s all about mo-men-tum and you also have to market it, so what you do is you get someone to help you set up a blog on WordLess.org or Booger.com or whatever and you don’t need to do much, just put in one of those blue lines you click on which takes you to where your eBook is selling like hot, juicy, word-drenched cakes as you watch the money pouring into your PlayPen account while you sign books and look awesome and adorable having your photo taken and shit.

By the way, you guys, I like the word eBooks because the “e” part sounds like the noise inside my head, you know? Eeeeeeeeeeee. LOL!

Oh, and here’s a big secret I’m gonna tell you, because I’m going to wet my Lululemons if I don’t: all you gotta do is write about vampires. Or dragons. And guess what? You shouldn’t make them too scary because you have to write for most people, who are all pretty much major wusses, but here’s the really neat part… ha, ha… you make them fall in love. Just like it would happen in real life.

Huh? Story? No, you don’t need to worry, every book ever written has basically one story line. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl again. Or here, if you want to be really clever, just reverse the sexes, lol! See? I’m brilliant! Anyway, just follow that formula and give your characters super-awesome names… oh, and find a really bright, sappy cover, don’t forget, because you need to be noticed in the marketplace, because since those first lucky folks struck gold, a whole boatload of others have joined the bandwagon… isn’t that typical?… and because of that, we have to stand out from the crowd by yelling “buy my book!” louder and louder, and by going to all our friends on Facebook and Twitter and telling them to download our stuff or they’re not even our friends really they’re just jealous… LOL!… and don’t forget to drop into as many groups as you can and tell complete strangers on the internet they better buy your book because it’s the only way anyone will notice it otherwise. No, no, they won’t get upset, it’s called Cap-it-al-ism and we’re adjusting to the marketplace. Everyone’s doing it.

Because, see, we’re undies, got it? That stands for undependent because we’re not dependent on the old record companies any more, that’s what I read on Mushable once, that Numbster changed the whole ballgame and now these Random Penguins and Simon Shyster types are wondering what happened while the undie revolution literally killed off all the literary agents and editors after torturing them with horrible mangled grammar and buried them in a warehouse in Brooklyn I think where all the mob bosses go to mourn the death of the Big Six, which is what they call all the old Sicilian families now they’ve lost the publishing wars. Or, I might have got that slightly wrong, but you get the gist, yeah?

It’s a whole new world and we can make our fame and fortune on the internet, better even than Snooks and The Situation because this is post-TV, baby, this is the newest, sparkliest thing.

Ha, all those people ever since high school calling me a bubblehead or a dialtone, you watch me get the last laugh, me an author and everything. ‘Cos yeah, I’m not even a writer, I’m gonna be an author, which means I am like the next level of writer, like when you go up a level in that War of the Worldscraft game my little brother plays, ROFL. Hey, wasn’t Tom Cruise in that movie? Anyway, you can eat my dust, Tom loser Cruise because I am going to set up my tent right there on the red carpet and the paparazzi will be begging me for upskirts of my sparkly vajayjay but I’m no headshaving wackjob like Brit became and they won’t ever get them, just the promise of them, because the secret is to milk it, and this chick’s fame is gonna last a lot longer than some stupid 15 minutes like that tennis player Andy Warthog used to say. I mean, think about it. Writers… sorry, authors…stay famous way longer than movie stars, even. Shakespeare, who I already mentioned, has been well known now for well over a hundred years, going back even before DiCaprio was born! Think about that! Ohmygod, ohmygod, so excited! *Claps enthusiastically*

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on March 23, 2010. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

A Quiet Belief In Darkness

Okay, a couple of reviews I wrote this week for two better-than-decent books I recently read. Don't know why, but I love that opening sentence. Anyway, they're both on Amazon, but I'll reproduce them here.

First up, what is ostensibly a horror collection titled The Dark Is Light Enough For Me, by John Claude Smith:

In a market that is pretty much saturated with the tiredest of horror tropes (vampires, zombies, werewolves), along comes this refreshing debut collection by John Claude Smith. And when I say refreshing, I certainly don't mean "lightweight". The darkness itself, in fact, is very much a constant character in these stories of guilt, hubris, paranoia, abuse, vanity, addiction, desire and depravity.

Many of these stories, though modern, have Lovecraftian antecedents in mood and theme, and if I had to name a more contemporary writer with which to make comparisons, I'd have to say Thomas Ligotti—although, again, with a slightly more modern twist. I don't want to say "gothic" exactly, since that would unfairly typecast these unsettling tales, and they deserve a wider audience than that.

Smith's language is often baroque and inventive, occasionally straying into the ambitious realms in which a scrupulous editor is necessary (and perhaps lacking at times), but any risk of overreaching is admirably offset when compared to the largely anodyne nature of so many contemporary horror clichés. Smith manages to unearth and expose more layers of that deceptively simple term "horror" than most: here, existential dread arrives in unexpected places; disgust and dismay, too. Some of these stories are downright distressing, in fact.

Which is all a convoluted way of saying: buy this book, read it, and be prepared for some serious insomniac unease.

I said "ostensibly" back there as it manages to be something more than straight horror. Anyway, moving on to my second offering, RJ Ellory's A Quiet Belief In Angels.

At first glance, A Quiet Belief In Angels is a coming-of-age crime melodrama with an ameliorating echo of Steinbeck. But if we recall the familiar dictum that truth is stranger than fiction, we can appreciate that RJ Ellory's plot owes at least as much to his own backstory as it does to any lurid dimestore novel. It earns its occasional extravagances, in other words. And it does this in two ways. First, as mentioned, the author's own life has been punctuated by some remarkably similar losses and heartaches as those of his protagonist, Joseph Vaughn. And second, the gentle, lyrical tone of the novel manages to temper and even mask what might otherwise appear ludicrous.

In an interview with fellow author Richard Godwin, Ellory claims there are "two types of novels […] those that you read simply because some mystery was created and you ha[ve] to find out what happened. The second kind of novel [i]s one where you read the book simply for the language itself, the way the author use[s] words, the atmosphere and description. The truly great books are the ones that accomplish both."

Ellory very much accomplishes that difficult synthesis. It's flawed, of course; what isn't? But the balance between the dismaying mystery that emerges from a series of violent child murders in small town 1940s Georgia onwards, and a soft, lush lyricism redolent of the southern landscape itself, is both a satisfying one and a successful one. This is a mystery yet it transcends genre conventions. It is a story of serial killings yet it transcends the police procedural. It is character-driven (Vaughn in particular is a compelling and unorthodox protagonist) yet quietly contemplative. It's a haunted tale, more than anything, a branch of southern gothic with a tragic twist.

Finally, I was also extremely impressed with the deft manner in which an English author manages to capture the authentic atmosphere, speech rhythms and culture of the American south, with very few jarring notes ("launderette" for "laundromat" was one of them, alongside the publisher's puzzling decision to use British style single quotes for dialogue in the Kindle version I had).

That aside, this is a novel well worth your time.

Enjoy them both.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.