Think Better

Literature & Writing I'm a writer!
101

Thanks, Tim!

Inside views are so fascinating, especially the reality check you are providing about how the writer must labor to make their book more successful.

It’s wonderful to hear it’s doing well. It’s a good reminder how it’s sometimes worth it to go after the smaller publishers, where one can be a bigger fish, to them.

And it’s a good warning about the hybrid marketing dilemma. It seems you picked the right niche.

This has been happening to me in the fiction field; I can get my books read, and people say great things about them. Then they run into the marketing wall (we don’t know what genre this is…) and they fall off a cliff.

That is part of what piqued my interest in non-fiction. Though I haven’t given up on the novels!

102

Adventures in Amazonland.

Well, I’ve been working just as hard at selling my book, Think Better, as I did writing it. The PR people working for me (some through my publisher and some contracted independently) are starting to make headway. I’ve had about eight interviews on US-based radio stations — ranging from quasi-religious shows to business-oriented shows to home-maker shows to night-hawk shows. There seems to be some cumulative effect — Think Better is gaining some traction, though the pace seems (at least to me) slow.

I thought you might be interested in two recent Amazon experiences. Most of my reviews have been excellent (22 five-stars plus one four-star on Amazon.com and seven five-stars on Amazon.co.uk). But there have been exceptions.

One reviewer on Amazon.co.uk said he was flipping through the book and found a misattribution (he was right: in one paragraph I refer to an urban legend as fact, and I’ll be correcting the error if ever there is a a second printing). This fellow was quite unforgiving. You can read his review and my reply on UK review.

In short, what he says is that once he came on the error, he “slammed the book shut” because he couldn’t have any faith in a writer who made such a mistake. He was so exercised by this that he went home (he had to have been in a book store to slam the book shut), logged on to Amazon and plunked a one-star on the book. I thought it interesting. Yes, the mistake is there. But I’m thinking a book review should probably be based on reading at least a significant portion of a book, rather than a single paragraph.

The second one is also interesting. This was on Amazon.com. Like the UK reviewer, this guy seems angry. I won’t go into detail. Again, if you’re interested you can read his words on US review.

Something struck me as weird about what he said, so I checked out his other reviews. And by golly, there’s a pattern! With one exception, he gives only fives and ones. He is clearly a divorced dad who’s had a very bad experience. Read his other reviews and you’ll see that his attitude towards women borders on the misogynistic. As it turns out, his review of Think Better hinges on several stories about women! The stories he refers to (I think: he’s not very articulate, using the word prognosticator when I think he means protagonist) are about strong, intelligent women. Weird.

In both cases, the reviews seem to be less about the book than about the reviewers. I wonder if others in this forum have had similar experiences with reviewers?

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for condolences here. I’m not in any way upset about these reviews. I’ve had enough good ones to know Think Better is a worthy effort. In fact, I think a variety of opinions is a good thing. I’m just intrigued by the underlying process, and I thought the contributors to this forum might be too.

All the best,

Tim

103

While my work is all fiction, so the reading demo is obviously different, I can nevertheless unequivocally assure you that yes, many reviews tell you much more about the reviewer than the book itself.

Frustrating, from a PR perspective, but on the other hand it’s my experience that most people tune the ranting reviews out as just that - rants.

104

Hi Tim,
You should be thankful that second reviewer took the time-out from reviewing divorce books (pro-woman = 1 star, pro-father = 5 star) to even look at yours!

With regards to reviews: I have noticed the trend on a number of websites, whether it is about books, CDs, computer software, that most reviewers tend to allocate one star or five. I think it is mostly due to people’s motives to review on sites such as amazon.

Their response is either “I absolutely loved this, so I want to tell everyone about it (five stars)”; or “I had a terrible experience with this… the right mouse button doesn’t work; the book promotes a lie I don’t want to read; if I ever hear this album again I will drag my fingernails over a blackboard to block out the noise (one-star)”.

Professional reviewers may be different, because they are paid to write reviews. But for amateurs who get nothing out of it, and need to go to the trouble of reviewing something themselves, will usually do so only if they have a strong emotional response (either positive or negative) to the subject.

Matt

105

Yesterday, I was reading the (US) reviews of Stephen Pinker’s “Stuff of Thought” for a friend as we are collaborating on a paper which concerns it – the paper will come out in a Chinese academic journal, we hope. It was the same thing, top rating, with one or two in the middle ranges, and then bottom rating from people who obviously had some sort of axe to grind.

Interestingly, many of them referred potential readers to Chap. 7 on taboo language and swearing, with one of them claiming that Pinker is continuing to promote the use of such language while hiding behind a mask of scientific research, because he actually quotes the words he is talking about! I personally found other chapters much more interesting, though, remembering a (part?) thread on this forum on the use of swearing, some of you may find food for thought there.

Mark

106

What a great observation, Matt. Makes perfect sense. It would be interesting to get review stats from Amazon and the like and see if the middle-of-the-road 3’s are the least common. I’ll bet they’d show you’re right.

All the best,

Tim

107

Hi all,

Well, I’ve been learning a little more about non-fiction book marketing. My publicists
(the ones I’ve contracted) have been doing a pretty good job, considering they’re trying
to promote a first-time, no-name author. So far they’ve arranged a half dozen radio
interviews, including a program called Something You Should Know, which is syndicated to
about 200 US stations. SYSK is airing two shows, one today and one tomorrow.

Apart from radio, the publicists have secured a number of print interviews — though
nothing mainstream yet. The best responses have been from vertical publications that
target specific industries. The largest of these has been a magazine that goes to 1.8
million subscribers of an insurance company.

These media activities have translated into three things: 1) some direct sales, through
both online and bricks-and-mortar bookstores; 2) increased name recognition for Think
Better; and perhaps most importantly 3) web-clicks to the book page we have designed.

The webpage has proven to be interesting. My background is in marketing, but my focus had
been on high-end advertising, where one of the keys is to say as much as you can using
with as few words as possible. I’ve learned that, for my book at least, the “less is more”
approach is less effective on the internet than the classic Direct Marketing approach,
which as those of you who have ever received DM mailings know, is exactly the opposite:
use as much space as possible to deliver your message, and repeat it ad nauseam.

On our original webpage for Think Better, we tried to be classy and smart. Click-throughs
were minimal. On our redesigned page (based on consultation with a web marketer) is DM all
the way — not what I would consider classy at all. Click-throughs have been astonishingly
high (this is somehow disturbing to me!).

If you want to see what it looks like goto tenkaizen.com. Please note :
I AM NOT DIRECTING YOU TO THE SITE TO PROMOTE MY BOOK
(though I wouldn’t complain if you wanted to buy it!)

I simply want to show the people in this forum a web-based book-marketing technique that
has produced some significant results.

I am happy to respond to any questions you may have about my marketing experiences, and
I’ll continue updating this thread as I learn more.

All the best to all of you,

Tim

108

That’s really interesting, Tim. I’m in the middle of having my website redesigned and I’d never thought of turning it into a marketing tool like yours. (I’m a simple writer of fiction and I profess not to understand such matters. :wink: )

I’m also amazed at the number of words on a single page, since my website designers originally told me to limit myself to 250-300 words per page.

Now, although a lot of very nice people send me emails about my life and work after visiting my site, I’ve always wondered just how many sales it has generated. Maybe I should stop thinking ‘literary’ and start thinking ‘commercial’. Are there any other fiction-writers out there with websites who’ve tried different approaches?

And oddly enough, Tim, I had the strange feeling that I’d met one of the people pictured on tenkaizen.com.

Thanks for keeping us up to date with your experiences in the world of publishing.

cw

109

Wow, that is one horrible web page :smiley: Not that I’m arguing with the results, but I think this clearly shows the schism between different areas of marketing…!

(It took me a while to get to the bottom and realise that the entire site is on one page. Unbelievable!)

Crimewriter, I’d be wary of trying to use that approach for fiction. The most successful fiction author sites I’ve seen are the ones that foster a sense of approachability and community. Some of the traditional marketing applies - sprinkle covers of your books, and links to buy them, all over. But the hard sell approach is much less effective, in my experience, and may even turn potential readers off.

(Note: I’m not holding my own site up as some kind of example. If anything, my site doesn’t market hard enough.)

110

Yes, it is unbelievable. I was amazed too. And my page isn’t even half as long as some of the other examples I’ve seen.

As I said, this is not the kind of thing I would ever have done on my own. But the web marketer I consulted (for a fair buck, mind you!) insisted that the best approach is the DM approach. It’s almost like inundating the audience into submission. You give them plenty of opportunities to click through on the way down the page, but basically you don’t stop until they surrender. At least that’s the theory. And I can’t argue with the results.

Re fiction: My instincts also tell me this isn’t the right approach — that, as you say, Antony, community is the key (but then again, my instincts would never have told me that what you see on tenkaizen.com is the right approach either!).

111

Incredible. Normally, I flee from such a horrible site after having hit PageDown 2 times.

But what you say, Tim, fits perfectly in with what a German marketing specialist said last year in a marketing forum. He claimed that he sold over thousand e-books through such a site (it was even much uglier than yours). And the e-book was way too pricey.

I did not believe him. But you seem to have attracted a lot of visitors using the same approach. So, he may have told the truth.

Well. What does that tell us about the people out there? (And: No. I think I do not want to know :unamused: )

Franz

112

Tim,

Thanks a lot for all your reports. This is like an ongoing TV drama, and the website – what can I say? Very clever design at first sight (on top, when the eye is caught by the first relaxing blue message in all this orange fire), but after a bit of scrolling it tells me: You are so dumb, “Think better” won’t help you. But now that I know why you chose this approach, and you say it helps, I will start to think better :wink:.

Is there a reason why you don’t hide the site statistics link?

Now, looking forward to the next part of your story,

Maira

113

From memory of the logo, it looks like one of the freebie companies, and they require it be displayed (I guess so they get recognition/more traffic/whatever). And also, the user needs to download it for them to keep accurate stats, as it is remotely hosted.

I’m sure Tim will correct me if I’m wrong.

Matt

114

Hi all,

I am writing from Dubai Airport. Flew in on Emirates, one of the few good airlines left in my experience. Waiting for connection to Bahrain, where I am speaking, then back to Abu Dhabi for another gig, then back to Dubai for another.

Yes, Maria, Matt is right. Extreme tracking requires the logo. I also use Stat Counter though, which doesn’t require the logo to be posted.

Will keep you posted.

Tim

115

Hi All,

The other day I got my first television interview about Think Better. It was on a live
morning news, current affairs, and fluff show called Canada AM. For those in this forum
from the US, Canada AM uses the same format as Good Morning America, TODAY, and
their ilk, including a jolly chubby weather guy, a “serious” newsreader and a bi-gender
anchor/host team. I’m guessing there are UK equivalents. Are there?

The interview was all of four minutes, top to tail, including intro and extro. Talk about
elevator speeches! But I think it came off pretty well. If you’re interested, you can see it
on youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HR6qd9ynnSQ.

Surprisingly (to me), a lot of people saw it. Book sales on Amazon increased dramatically
over the next three days. Since the interview, I’ve received two more television requests,
one in Canada and one in the US. These came out of the blue. My publicists will also be
using the clip to try to persuade other media that I can give a decent interview.

Again, I post this in the hope that it’s helpful to forum members who know as little about
book marketing as I did a few months ago. (Get your elevator speech down!)

All the best,

Tim

116

Wow, Tim, that is so cool! You came off very, very well and looked great to boot. I’m so glad your book is doing so well!!! All very helpful to those of us who hope to go through this process! Thanks so much, and again, many congrats!!!

Alexandria

117

Yep, there’s a reason everyone and their aunt pushes to get on the breakfast shows. Mock them all you like, but they have audiences in the millions.

118

And; just watched it. You handled yourself very well, Tim. Excellent work!

119

There is a kind of marketing beauty in it. Surely those whose response to being inundated into surrender is to buy the book really do need [to] Think Better. :slight_smile:

120

Well done Tim! Four minutes in television airtime is both an eternity and a nano-instant, and like most marketing needs careful thought :wink: . I reckon your performance was very good.

There are indeed equivalent breakfast programmes in the UK - principally BBC Breakfast and GMTV. Both often carry items of this sort; your publisher’s PR department ought to make an effort to get you on.

Other targets in the UK I’d aim for would include Steve Wright on BBC Radio 2 - audiences in the millions, does two or three live interviews a day, not overlooked by the likes of Will Smith and Martin Sheen, but also seems to appreciate writers both factual and fictional.