Most authors love to brag about hitting a bestseller's list of any kind at all. I once made it to the top of the free-giveaways in romance on Amazon with Trashy Affair, not exactly a great triumph. Few of us want to talk about our failures though we analyze them endlessly and swear never to do that again! I will say that in every book I write I strive to create wonderful characters and interesting plots. I have never "phoned" one in as some well-know authors do knowing the public will buy anything they put out. I can't afford to disappoint, but sometimes despite my best efforts, I do.
First, I have learned the hard way that covers with a single women on them don't sell nearly as well as those with studly guys. My books have sex scenes, but aren't particularly steamy so I prefer less explicit covers--but my worst sellers have lone women or discrete flowers on them. This applies to Will of her Own, Always Yellow Roses, A Wild Red Rose, and The Courville Rose. Might as well reveal my worst sellers now.
Choice of characters also plays a part. Few like the bad girl turned good because it takes a while for her to become likable, example Wild Red Rose. The kick-ass heroine is very in. Not many want to watch a naive young woman grow up and gain strength as in Will of her Own. Loosely based on my my college years and wanderings after that with a self-centered first husband who was not a rock musician like the one in the book, this is women's fiction, girl growing up if you want to call it that, not romance, and maybe a little too real. There is humor though of a dark variety and a happy ending, but that does not suffice. More than one reader has said they will stick to my Sinners football romances.
Plot can also cause a crash and burn. Reincarnation doesn't seem to be popular right now.. In Courville Rose, a ghost condemned to haunt her ancestral home forever because she committed suicide when her fiance dies in the Civil War (she wasn't very stable to begin with), notices the souls of people she knew being returned to earth in modern times. She vows to seize a new body and drive the other soul out so that she can search for her lost love in hopes that he has come back, too. However, the only soul she deems weak enough to take over, turns out to be a fighter and refuses to leave. So, she must share the body of the child, grow up again, and try to convince her host to marry the man she wants, not the choice of the girl. Maybe it is the time spent in childhood that harms this book. It's only gotten two reviews, both favorable, so I don't know. Usually if someone hates my books they say straight out why, but few have purchased or read this one.
My worst failure, ranked at 5,938,618 among Amazon's millions of titles as compared to Trashy Affair at 106,000 (if you don't think that is good, let me tell you it is) is Always Yellow Roses, a family saga that starts in Louisiana in the 1830's, goes up to the Civil War, then in the second half switches to the 1980's when a teenage girl meets a guy she is sure is her reincarnated lover from the past--and proves it, more or less. The book contains lots of strong and persistent women, but perhaps Noreen is too young when she comes into the tale as a teenager. She, too, grows to adulthood and gains her HEA, but I am thinking her youth and the reincarnation theme, and maybe even the Civil War killed this one. I don't know. Personally, I love it. Or it could be when the first of the Roses series came out (The Convent Rose), a short, light-hearted romance, it was immediately within hours of release attacked by a troll who couldn't even get the name of the hero right, garbled, and revealed the plot so that series never thrived. The ugly review is still there, the longest one of course, and despite the several good reviews, readers see this one first as it is the only negative one.
Then, we come An Ashy Affair,which I talked about in Writing Disasters. It should have been a hit being a companion piece to Trashy Affair, having a sexy guy cover, a good and complex plot with a mystery subplot and well-developed adult characters, plus the HEA, but defective early reviews copies containing only 122 of the 364 page book drew so many ugly reviews about how incomplete and plotless it seemed, I don't know how to stop the flood. Evidently many Net Galley reviewers downloaded it and the ugly continues to flow. I contacted every one and informed they should ask for the complete book.Only one responded and raised the rating from two stars to four. Another said she knew it was defective but was just going to judge the entire book on the first 122 pages because that's what she has. Terrible review followed of course. With that attitude, no wonder. Destroys my faith in Net Galley for sure. Not their fault, but the publishers for sending out the bad copies, but what kind of reviewers do they attract? And to think I had to pay for their opinions!
Well, enough crying in my wine. I wish I had some right now. The Sinners series still rules in my ratings, seven titles in all with the eighth, Sister of a Sinner, coming out in the spring. Another rule I've learned is just keep writing your most successful series. It is what your readers want no matter how much you want to spread your author's wings and fly in other directions.
Showing posts with label Publishing errors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publishing errors. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2016
Friday, October 7, 2016
Publishing Disasters
I've been writing for ten years and been published for six, not all that long a time, yet I have experienced my share of publishing disasters. The worst came this week. An Ashy Affair, a companion piece to Trashy Affair, came out last Friday. Pre-sales were good. While an author doesn't always know how a book will be received, this was my sure thing, a funny, sexy book with a happy ending and a little mystery and pathos thrown in. As usual, I awaited my first review--which said the book was terrible with an awful ending. Huh? It ends with an HEA wedding. I thought the person must be a troll as she gave no details about the story and reported the abuse to Amazon.
Next review, not as bad, good characters, etc. but made no sense, went nowhere, abrupt ending. Now, I am totally perplexed. Finally, a loyal reader contacted me personally to say she didn't understand why I ended the very short book of 122 pages so strangely during a lunch between two sisters. Ah-ha! The book has 342 pages and 29 chapters. Readers and worse, reviewers, were getting less than half of the book. I reported this immediately to my publisher, their fault, a computer glitch, but the damage has been done, I am afraid. Who is going to look at those comments and want to buy the book? Some good reviews are filtering in, but it may take months to repair this damage. Often people buy and store books on their readers and might not get to the defective copy for a long time--and then there will be more bad reviews. Of course they can trade it in for a good one, but will they bother? Worse, Ashy Affair was sent to NetGalley, a review source from which came some of the worse remarks. I did notify those reviewers that their copies had been faulty, but so far none have changed their opinions. Yes, I shed some tears over this. Ashy will never be the book it was intended to be.
I've talked about being orphaned when a publisher shuts down. This happened to me about nine books into my career. The day that small e-press shut down, six of my titles disappeared. The authors hadn't received royalties for half a year, a sure sign of upcoming trouble. In my circumstances, the publisher did everything she could to make things right for her authors. She returned rights immediately, tried to place her writers with other presses by making wonderful recommendations, and saw that we all got part of the remaining assets to make up for lost royalties. Still, though all my titles were picked up fairly rapidly (most of the Sinners series), two book, one newly under contract and one lacking only its cover were in limbo for over a year. First, I had to have all the others re-edited and re-covered by the new press. This is akin to putting out six new books in one year and was exhausting before the two new ones could come out. So, reset my writing career back a year. Believe me, I was lucky. Some orphans never receive the royalties owed and don't get their rights back without a struggle so that they can move on. They are left in the cold and dark searching for a new publisher.
I might have mentioned before to always personally correct your galley copy and send in those changes. This is the last time you see a book before it goes to print. No one will do this for you. It gets published flaws and all if you don't do the work of rereading every word in a book that you might be thoroughly tired of by now after several edits. Usually, I find an average of twenty-seven errors, and my books run long. Some are tiny and probably wouldn't have been noticed by the readers, a comma here or there. Some are huge like half the book having quotation marks turned backwards as happened in Wish for a Sinner, a novel of 103,000 words. I noted every time this happened, and the corrections were done, but how stupid would the book have looked if this hadn't been caught. In both this case and above, these were computer errors, one of the chances you take with e-publishing.
If a cover is wrong, do speak up. Twice, my light-hearted books received creepy covers. Once the title was misspelled. Another time, my blond, Nordic clean-shaven hero appeared swarthy with a black goatee. You aren't supposed to fuss about your covers. No, they can't get a model who looks exactly like your hero or heroine, but they can conjure up the right mood and get the spelling correct. One author I met admitted she had a cover with woman who had three arms. It's still out there, but she had made a conversation piece of it.
I have experienced all these horrors, but not, thank heaven, having my pen name taken away permanently by a publisher and having to start all over with a new identity and no name recognition. Nor have I had to sue for long overdue back royalties which the publisher continued to receive but never distributed. These things could lie ahead, but I certainly hope not.
If you are an author who has experienced a publishing disaster, please feel free to vent here with your comments. If you are an author who has never had a printing disaster, I envy you.
Next review, not as bad, good characters, etc. but made no sense, went nowhere, abrupt ending. Now, I am totally perplexed. Finally, a loyal reader contacted me personally to say she didn't understand why I ended the very short book of 122 pages so strangely during a lunch between two sisters. Ah-ha! The book has 342 pages and 29 chapters. Readers and worse, reviewers, were getting less than half of the book. I reported this immediately to my publisher, their fault, a computer glitch, but the damage has been done, I am afraid. Who is going to look at those comments and want to buy the book? Some good reviews are filtering in, but it may take months to repair this damage. Often people buy and store books on their readers and might not get to the defective copy for a long time--and then there will be more bad reviews. Of course they can trade it in for a good one, but will they bother? Worse, Ashy Affair was sent to NetGalley, a review source from which came some of the worse remarks. I did notify those reviewers that their copies had been faulty, but so far none have changed their opinions. Yes, I shed some tears over this. Ashy will never be the book it was intended to be.
I've talked about being orphaned when a publisher shuts down. This happened to me about nine books into my career. The day that small e-press shut down, six of my titles disappeared. The authors hadn't received royalties for half a year, a sure sign of upcoming trouble. In my circumstances, the publisher did everything she could to make things right for her authors. She returned rights immediately, tried to place her writers with other presses by making wonderful recommendations, and saw that we all got part of the remaining assets to make up for lost royalties. Still, though all my titles were picked up fairly rapidly (most of the Sinners series), two book, one newly under contract and one lacking only its cover were in limbo for over a year. First, I had to have all the others re-edited and re-covered by the new press. This is akin to putting out six new books in one year and was exhausting before the two new ones could come out. So, reset my writing career back a year. Believe me, I was lucky. Some orphans never receive the royalties owed and don't get their rights back without a struggle so that they can move on. They are left in the cold and dark searching for a new publisher.
I might have mentioned before to always personally correct your galley copy and send in those changes. This is the last time you see a book before it goes to print. No one will do this for you. It gets published flaws and all if you don't do the work of rereading every word in a book that you might be thoroughly tired of by now after several edits. Usually, I find an average of twenty-seven errors, and my books run long. Some are tiny and probably wouldn't have been noticed by the readers, a comma here or there. Some are huge like half the book having quotation marks turned backwards as happened in Wish for a Sinner, a novel of 103,000 words. I noted every time this happened, and the corrections were done, but how stupid would the book have looked if this hadn't been caught. In both this case and above, these were computer errors, one of the chances you take with e-publishing.
If a cover is wrong, do speak up. Twice, my light-hearted books received creepy covers. Once the title was misspelled. Another time, my blond, Nordic clean-shaven hero appeared swarthy with a black goatee. You aren't supposed to fuss about your covers. No, they can't get a model who looks exactly like your hero or heroine, but they can conjure up the right mood and get the spelling correct. One author I met admitted she had a cover with woman who had three arms. It's still out there, but she had made a conversation piece of it.
I have experienced all these horrors, but not, thank heaven, having my pen name taken away permanently by a publisher and having to start all over with a new identity and no name recognition. Nor have I had to sue for long overdue back royalties which the publisher continued to receive but never distributed. These things could lie ahead, but I certainly hope not.
If you are an author who has experienced a publishing disaster, please feel free to vent here with your comments. If you are an author who has never had a printing disaster, I envy you.
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