I’m phasing out my insightbb.com email. If you’re emailing me at leatherzebra@insightbb.com or sicacaelestas@insightbb.com please be aware of this change. My new email address for all personal matters is leatherzebra@gmail.com and for professional matters is theothermichelelee@gmail.com

My insightbb addresses will still be active for as long as it takes to transfer everyone over.

The fabulous Jim Hines blogged about author “tip jars” today and I find myself in perfect agreement with him. I’ve come across my fair share of online tip jars and every time it seemed to me like the author was begging for money. I’ve run across a few online magazines with tip jars as well, but I think this is a little different. Take Apex Magazine (which I just read and reviewed, so it’s fresh in my mind). Donations go to cover the operating costs of the magazine, which pays five cents a word to authors. The site is also bereft of annoying ads, isn’t hosted on a free webs site and they go very far to meet the needs of readers (offering ebook forms, audio forms, quality fiction etc).

There’s a number of other sites that do this, Clarkesworld has their Citizenship drive, Fantasy Magazine has a donate button, you get the point. There’s a difference in my mind between keeping a market going and tipping an author. Maybe it’s because as an author I feel it’s wrong to ask people to just give me money. I’ll sell you a book or an article or story, but it’s not your job to support me just because you enjoyed one of my stories.

If you do want to help support me (and honestly unlike Jim, I have to admit I could really use it) then buy a copy of Rot (if you really want to support me, you can buy a print copy instead of an ebook copy), or a copy of Private Lessons (which isn’t horror), write a review of one of my books, or recommend it to a friend, or pick up any of the anthologies and magazines I’ve been in.

But I’m not here to be supported by you, the reader, I’m here to entertain you (hopefully). And I’m here specifically, as in blogging despite a really low comment margin, because I have something to say and I enjoy having my own little space in the vastness of the web where I can say it without being jumped on, or censored or trolled.

I know you readers are out there (my webpage prove there are a lot of you) and that’s enough for me, though sometimes it does feel a little lonely around here. *cricket*

I’m blogging at the Apex Blog today, topic: Quality vs popularity in fiction. If you’re checking your calendar and wondering if it’s already Friday, unfortunately it’s not. Today’s normal poster and I switched. But please go read and comment.

I’m all for spreading good information, because 1) it makes us all better people and 2) there’s a lot of seriously wrong misinformation out there and sometimes we need help sorting it all out from the people and situations and emotional responses that mix up that information. Now, keep in mind that information is a relative thing (like taste) so just because the following is true for me doesn’t mean it’s universally true.

Ready? Then let me start with a confession: last week I started a new job as a bookseller with my area Borders store. I’ve always loved Borders, from the days when the only store we’d visit would be in Indianapolis when we took our halfway point break on the road trip to visit family in South Bend. In that time I’d never been to a bigger bookstore than Borders and I never could spend enough time there.

Now things are more turbulent. Borders isn’t doing well (but neither is Barnes & Noble) and my goals aren’t those of a thirteen year old girl dazzled with all those shelves. But I have already learned a lot, and today I’m going to address two things I’ve already learned are very different on the author/reader publishing side and on the publisher/bookseller side.

Issue #1: African American interest books having their own section.

A lot of buzz on the reader/author side of things hates this. It’s been compared to segregation. People (rightfully) want authors and books to be treated fairly and offered to a wide audience, not sequestered away for only certain eyes.

The truth: Our AA readers would kill us if they had to hunt through the general fiction section area to find the latest books in the series/by the authors they like. My store is in a very central-urban area. Most days the number one genre I sell period is AA fiction. People come in looking for book three or four in a series–series which often aren’t numbered, or necessarily written to read consecutively–so it is much much easier on them to go to the AA section and find what they want.

We also maintain separate Manga, SF/F, Romance, Horror, Mystery & YA sections. This is how our customers like it. This helps them buy more and buy better which is good for everyone. Most of our customers come in while waiting for the bus or on their lunch hour or break, etc. They come back because our store is convenient for them. If things were difficult or more time consuming they couldn’t, literally, afford to come in and that would be bad for everyone.

So this comes down to meeting the customers needs (at least at our store/on our end). AA fiction is our biggest selling genre (though it’s close to romance) and because a lot of the books are trade not mass market it’s our biggest money maker too.

Issue #2: Big box bookstores don’t take small press books because they [are prejudiced/evil/don’t deal with the little guy/only out to make money/etc.]

I hate to be so negative about this one, but I’ve heard lots of these complaints made by people who have never seen the backside of a bookstore at all and they can get really angry (and insulting) about it. So yeah, there’s no good way to phrase this one.

The truth is it DOES come down to money, but not the way you think. First, bookstores need returns in order to stock the variety they do. Bookstores are constantly a test site. No one knows for sure what will hit big and what won’t, though we can make some educated guesses. The book business is massively hit or miss because it’s trying to profit off people’s tastes and those are so varying and chaotic it’s a barely contained mess. So a bookstore being able to return copies of books that missed means they are still around to try out book #2. If the bookstores (not just the big boxes, but all bookstores) fail so do the publishers. Neither can afford to front the whole loss, take the whole risk or can survive without the other. The returns system is broken, but who out there is coming up with something better?

Second, requiring that a press has distribution through Bowker or Ingrams or Baker & Taylor is not a snob move. Just yesterday the regional sales manager and I spoke about this and she pointed out that part of the problem is paying the publisher. See through a distributor the store just has to pay the distributor which then pays the publisher, who divvies it up for agents and authors. Getting small presses without distribution their money and product has become a large problem, and one that people like our manager don’t have time to deal with. Distribution makes it easier on the booksellers, giving them more time to run the store and serve the customers.

Issue #3 Returns

Uh, yeah this one is WAY misunderstood. Yes, bookstores overbuy (though you wouldn’t know that if you looked at our stock room. We have about 2-3 bookshelves of overstock. That’s it.) and publishers over print and then we all end up with more copies than we need. First, this isn’t as bad as running out of copies. Second, yeah it’s not a perfect system that allows the bookseller to send the books back.

But at my store we send the WHOLE book back. And you know what happens next? Eventually the publisher approaches Borders and says “Hey look, we have a bunch of these books left over. Will you buy them at a bargain rate?” And the bookstore says “Sure” and slaps low low prices on them and sets them up out front–and sells every single copy they bought no returning these copies. (No, really, I sold 4 Permuted Press titles for ninety eight cents last week. And right now we have a big mess of bargains from Random House the ring up as “Random House bargains”.) We sell them ALL. No stripping, no sending back just the covers. No dumping paint on them to prevent them from being used.

I’m not saying these things don’t happen, I’m just saying they’re not universal procedures.

That’s all for this installment. I hope you’ve all learned something, because I know I’ve learned a lot in my short time on the other side of things.

Yesterday I talked about how to become a reviewer, today I’m giving a crash course on how to get reviews as an author.

It helps a lot if way before you need a reviewer you become aware of the sort of places that do reviews. Of course you have your biggies, newspapers, major magazines, Publishers Weekly. There’s no harm at all of being aware of these places but a lot of us don’t rate that sort of attention. And that’s fine because there’s plenty of options out there these days.

Think about reviews should start as soon as you make a big sale (the rules are different for sales of short stories to magazines and anthologies. The sad fact is it’s just harder to get attention for those sorts of things and the people who can get the attention are the publishers. One author trying to get reviews and do all the promo is not fun, or rewarding.) So let’s define a big sale as one that’s all yours. You are the only author, or one of two authors. These are the projects where you can make a difference by taking initiative and working your own promo angle.

It also helps if you know what the point of a review is, from a marketing point of view. A review is word of mouth advertising. It falls into the first and second tiers of marketing; 1) making the consumer aware that your book exists and 2) potentially letting them know it’s good too. Even bad reviews accomplish the first point, so don’t be afraid to get your book out there.

Now that you have a book coming out you need to start looking around and find potential review sites. These can include; newspapers (from the New York Times Book Review to your local paper), magazines (Most genres have magazines. Cemetery Dance does reviews, so does Romantic Times and Locus. If you don’t know which magazines are big in your field, spend some time in a book store looking around.), book blogs (there are tons of these, like my own blog, or Dark Scribe Magazine and The Fix), bookseller sites (LibraryThing, GoodReads, Shelfari, Amazon.com, etc) and even the personal blogs of other authors in your genres.

In fact there’s a whole type of review that comes from your peers. Typically it’s called blurbing, but it works the same way and you approach people the same way.

Make a list of the sites you think would be a good match for your work. This involves being honest about your work (what genre it is, whether it has cross over appeal, etc) and READING THE GUIDELINES of the site. What, you thought submission guidelines would be over when you got that acceptance? Some sites have no guidelines, just an address you send the book to. Most book blog sites now do almost everything online (at least communications wise). Make a note of sites that accept ebooks and those that take only print books.

Keep this list. After all this won’t be your only major publication, right? So might as well save yourself some time next time around.

We know your money and resources are limited, so after you make this wish list evaluate it very carefully. Don’t be afraid to research the review sites like you would a publisher, after all, some have reputations for only publishing positive reviews, for being slow but fair, for ignoring books received and some have been known to charge for reviews (on top of the cost of books) or turn around and sell submitted books without reviewing them at all. (Sad and a little embarrassing.) You have every right to send to the sites that you think will help you the most. You could send out dozens of copies to all the major review sites, and be passed up by every one for some bigger authored book. Another sad, but true fact. Be practical about your genre and your audience. There’s nothing wrong with SF/F/romance or horror, but it is much less likely to be review on certain sites. They’re just like you, focusing on a specific audience, which might not mesh with yours.

Plan to get the most bang for your buck. One of the huge positive points to MonsterLibrarian.com, by the way, is that it’s one of the few library-specific review websites out there. Its goal is to help librarians find good books, with a side of helping other readers too, and it has a reputation for quality among its audience. This is something you as an author can benefit from.

Ask before sending. Most places I know of are okay with an informal “Hey, this is my book, this is what it’s about, can I send you a copy?” They’re also okay with generically titled emails, and mostly flexible with how the book fits into their goals and covered genres.

Which leads me right into my next point, always remember that reviewers are allies of the reader and the author. Now, most are pro reader first, and pro author second, but we aren’t here to trash your book or ruin your career. We love reading, love the industry and almost always work in our spare time with little or no pay (very often only the book is what we’re paid). It’s easy to get anxious and want your book reviewed and reviewed now. Ask, don’t badger. Be polite, not demanding.

When you send your book that’s pretty much it. It’s out of your hands now. The sad thing is that reviewers are almost universally overworked so sadly, your book won’t always get reviewed. In my experience book bloggers tend to have better rates on reviewing what is sent to them (maybe because they have less space constrictions as opposed to those who print reviews.)

Sending repeated emails to the site asking when your book will be reviewed will irritate reviewers. Asking if the book was received is kosher, but “Are you done yet? very week makes us dread picking your book up.

Here’s a few secrets from the reviewing side:

Often if you send us a book for free we feel obligated to review it because you’ve paid out to get it to us. If we have to pay for the books we review we’ll just stick to the stuff we know we like, which doesn’t help.

We don’t usually have firm orders to our reading pile because we want to like the books we pick up, so we don’t want personal stuff like having just read three horror books in a row, or really not feeling like we can handle a true squishy romance because we’re going through a rough time, to stand against you. Yeah, it means it will take us longer to get to your book, but do you really want us to pick it up and think “Do I have to?”

Lots of people think just because we review that means we’re good for advertising to. They add us to spam lists and send us blurbs asking us to review their book–for only $15.95. If you’re polite and read the guidelines you’re already above that pack.

No reviewer I have ever met just reviews the books. We talk about them, recommend them, and often are in a position to make an impact. (Um, for instance, I recently became a bookseller at Borders. You had better believe that the books I’ve reviewed are front and center in my mind when customers are asking for reading suggestions. The people at Monster Librarian, for a second example, are in many cases actual librarian and therefore directly in a position to point people to your books. and everyone had friends, coworkers and family who read. If we read your book we’re in all likelihood telling a lot of people about it.)

If you have any questions, feel free to stick them in the comments. I hope this helped.