My Quandary - How to Support Each Other's Books

Like most people who read a lot of books, I've usually blown my yearly book budget by mid-February.

This makes it hard to support the books of the writers I meet here, on Author's Den, MySpace and in various blogging communities.

If we all lived in the same town, we could trade books around and then go leave reviews on barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. Obviously, this isn't feasible for members of this forum since lending books by mail, sometimes internationally, would cost a lot for postage.

Unfortunately, few libraries have POD books, so we don't have the option of getting each other's books there.

Some months back, I made a list of the books written by the people online that I have the most interaction with AND who had books in genres I know anything about: $500. I don't know about the rest of you, but as a "starving writer" I don't have the $500.

Since we can't afford to buy all of each other's books, is there any other way we can support each other out in the cruel world of readers without using the review process?

How do the rest of you approach this quandary?*

Malcolm
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Malcolm R. Campbell
I invite you to stop by my Writer's Notebook blog at http://jockstewart.typepad.com/writers_notebook/ and say cool stuff about writing and visit me on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/mythrider

Admin Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 1586 Location : UK

We swap pdf files.
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Shelagh Watkins
http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk/

As always, a great suggestion, Shelagh.

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Jenny
Writing as Victoria Howard

www.victoriahoward.co.uk

Yeah, I'll go along with that as long as the reader then posts a review on amazon, etc..
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Heads and Tales out now!
http://www.lulu.com/karina-kantas

PDF's work...honestly though, I hang out here to dangle my toes in the water with other writers. I did start out ordering books when I first arrived here Malcolm, but ran into the same problem you did. $$ and cents. But I did read some really good books!

I think that a meaningful way we can be here is to coach each other through the questions, quandaries and weirdnesses of writing for a living or a hobby, just like we do.

A current weirdness I can think of...I cannot post a review on Amazon's US sitefrom here unless I buy a book off the US website, which I wouldn't do because then I also pay duty on it as it comes across the border. Just another reason that we are not talking, Amazon and I.
:pirat:
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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

Admin Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 1586 Location : UK

You can thank the bashers for that Pam. Members of the Absolute Write forum stomped all over amazon.com posting false reviews and using the voting buttons in an attempt to stop PublishAmerica books selling on Amazon. They only needed to wait for Amazon to do that for them! Of course, now the bashers think Amazon's a bully! The bashers think they are smart. Go figure.

This is a link to my book on amazon.com after amazon removed three spurious reviews but the voting buttons on the remaining reviews tell it all:

http://www.amazon.com/Planemakers-Flying-Machine-Shelagh-Watkins/dp/141377136X/
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Shelagh Watkins
http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk/

And these are just the sort of things that distract us from the work we do, because it means in addition to watching out for reviews that people post, that we might want to link to on our own sites and so on, we've got to be on the alert for foolishness, and the foolishness abounds.
bom

You'd think that folks had better things to do than to take up bashing. I love that term by the way...bashing. Bashing, bashing, bashing. sunny

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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

In the past 15 months I purchased approximately 20 books. Nine of those
were from authors that I met on the various forums.

#Books Publisher
7 PublishAmerica
1 Samhain
1 LuLu (Self-Publish)
1 Infinity Publishing (Self-Publish)

My evaluation:

The least amount of editing errors were from those that were self-published.
Every PA book had grammatical errors.
Two of the seven books were exceptional with just a few errors.
One was well written with a good story line and few errors.
Two had great story lines but the errors were so numerous that it cheapened the entire book. (If those two were edited and re-published they would be great sellers. As is, they just won’t fly)
One book should never have been published. A waste of money to purchase.
One rambled on and on with no plot. A waste of money to purchase.

The idea of reading pdf files is good.
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"To Beirut and Back"
http://www.freewebs.com/abemarch

Good idea, Shelagh about the PDF files. Er, why were the Absolute Write people going after Publish America?

Converting a WORD file (online, for those of us who only have Acrobat Reader) might be worthwhile since the e-books some publishers sell cannot be sent to other people.

I agree Pam, it's good just to be here and talk and that's one form of support. As for reviews, you can post them on Amazon.ca, right? I post reviews occasionally on Amazon.uk since some authors are not always on Amazon.com.

Those errors, Abe, are almost a stereotypical hallmark of POD books. Even with iUniverse's partial editing, I still have them. Most of us cannot edit our own stuff very well and professional editors charge more to edit POD books than most of those books are likely to earn. It's a tough problem.

Malcolm
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Malcolm R. Campbell
I invite you to stop by my Writer's Notebook blog at http://jockstewart.typepad.com/writers_notebook/ and say cool stuff about writing and visit me on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/mythrider

I try to support my writer friends by adding links to their website on my site and add a description of their work.

If I read their novels and think they are good, I will write good review for them. And I will tell everyone I know how much I enjoyed it and recommend it every chance I get. (I won't lie. I won't review a book I didn't like.) And I won't read a book just because an online friend wrote it. I don't have that kind of money or time. The book has to be something I really am interested in reading.

I LOVE a lot of the clever, intelligent, wonderful people I meet. But I am not going to read a novel about a shoot out in old Virginia City or a certain pivotal battle in Europe ... because I simple am not interested in the old west or wars.

For that same reason, I would NOT expect anyone who does not believe in fairies or who does not like romance novels to get tooth decay by reading my sweet, sappy, happily ever after, romantic drivel. (Even if you do like me)

To be honest, I don't come here expecting anyone to read my novels. I will go to reader forums if I want to "market" my books.

My novels are YA fantasy and fantasy romance.
I wouldn't expect a SciFi writer or Mystery writer to want to read my novels.

I come to author forums to encourage, be encouraged, just for the fun of it, to share ideas, and learn new things, etc.
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~ JoElle Martín ~

http://www.dreamersforest.com

Malcome,
I have never had a problem with writing. It came natural to me. Also with spelling, I was a champion speller in school winning contests. Of course most of my career writing was related to business. Business letters, tranining manuals, proposals, etc. Once I got onto these forums and began to listen to all the discussions about writing, I soon became intimidated. I heard about all the books one must read in order to write properly. Conjugation of verbs, use of adverbs, using the proper tense, etc. etc. I had one book published and was told that it was well written. Since that time, my style became cramped.
I can relate that to my experience in gaining my German drivers license. I had driven for more than 30 years in various countries including congested driving cities like Paris, Rome, Beirut and Athens. When I took my test for driving I had to start from scratch. I became conscious of how I had to do all the things that the tester would look for. I failed my driver's test twice before succeeding.
A person who knows how to drive doesn't think about each move he/she will make. It comes natural. I believe the same is true with writing - at least for me.
I have recently decided to write the way I write, tell my story the way I will tell it, and then have someone else check it out for the proper use of grammar. If I were 20 years younger perhaps I'd have a different attitude about it.
Anyway, those are simply my opinions.
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"To Beirut and Back"
http://www.freewebs.com/abemarch

I use links on my website too, and have posted some reviews of other authors' works that I have read. I have been picky about what I've read, and if it wasn't any good, I just don't admit to having read it.
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Zada Connaway
Mother's Journals: parts 1, 2 and 3 ISBN # 1-4241-6969-0

http://www.zadaconnaway.com/

I like the way that you think Abe. I think that some of the books about writing that I have read are helpful in the sense that they show what has worked for a particular writer, and they are also great examples of strong writing. For me, though I want to get the story out of my head and onto paper, and that's much more important than worrying about the mechanics of it. Besides, if we were able to put out writing that was "perfectly constructed", there wouldn't be any work left for the editors.

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Pam Robertson

http://andthebandplayedonmylawn.blogspot.com

Thanks Pam. I know where I can go for editing.
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"To Beirut and Back"
http://www.freewebs.com/abemarch