Review from Alaska

The lovely Janelle who writes the blog alaskanbambino.com just wrote a fabulous review of "Not Just a Princess" that I had to share.


"One of the ideas that hubby and I have had from the very beginning is that we would not raise our daughter to be a "princess". When I thought about princesses they all seemed to be loved for their looks, they never had jobs or careers, and they sat around waiting for a man to rescue them....these were not ideals I wanted to teach my daughter.

I also felt that modern day princesses can often be high maintenance, shallow and again waiting for a man...ugh!

So we have had a strict no princess policy. No toys, movies or clothes. All of my mommy friends have said the same thing, "good luck with that!"

So when author Mary Lee contacted me with a copy of her book to review I jumped at the chance. The book is called, Not Just a Princess and is available on Amazon for $10.

The books is about Mia who is often called a princess but decides that is not all she is. She is creative and a dreamer who wants to be a doctor, pirate and explorer! I love that the things she dreams of are not gender limiting. The message goes perfectly with my ideas of how to raise strong, successful young women. The colors and language would appeal to young girls, while the message will appeal to parents."

 

 

Authors, Check Your Amazon Category

If I'm looking in a book store for a Thai food cookbook, I'm not going to look for it in the toddler section. If a cook book is in that section it's out of place and no one would think to find it there. It's the job of the staff to make sure everything is categorized clearly and easy to find.

Online is a different animal. With Amazon, an author requests certain categories that their book be placed in. The problem is the categories authors can choose from don't exactly match the categories in the online store, so how can does it get organized? Well in my case, I asked for the "Imagination" category and got "Sports". There are no sports in "Not Just a Princess" so I emailed Amazon to correct this. After three requests, each taking 72 hours, and the help department getting confused about what I was asking in the first place, it was placed in a more appropriate category.  The Amazon store apparently doesn't have an imagination category despite making it an option for authors to click.

I'm noticing this isn't a unique problem either. I ran across a children's book the other day that was put under adult self-help. I don't blame some clueless, overworked person behind a computer. I'm sure this is a computer glitch of some sort but one people should watch out for. There are many reasons a book may not be selling and not being able to find it is definitely one of them.

To check your book, scroll down to nearly the bottom of your sell page where it says "Look for similar items by category". If the category doesn't fit the book, and is way off from the category you selected, email amazon.

Click the "Contact Us" button on the left of this page:
https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help

♥ Mary Lee

How to Choose a Graphic Designer for a Book

I may be a Graphic Designer but I'm not advertising my services today. Personally, I'm not a big fan of freelancing because of all the complicated contracts and unsteady work flow. However, if you are a writer in need of a freelance Designer, you've got your work cut out for you. Design can be confusing and messy if you are not a designer so here's a few tips on what to look for.

• You get what you pay for:
This actually works both ways. There are the Designers that are very cheap that create cheap looking work and then there are the very overpriced designers that are not worth the dough either. So you could get ripped off mediocre design or just cheap crap. The middle price ranges are the best because the designers are not making enough to stop trying to impress and are making just enough to actually put a decent amount of time and thought into it. 

• Look at the portfolio, more than the resume:
Graphic design may be one of the few professions where a masters degree is useless. There are people just graduating that have more skills than people with a masters and 10 years in the business. Why? Because it's an ever changing field. Every few years, what a designer knows becomes dated or a new technology comes out or more skills are required, etc. I'm not saying that people who have never had a job before are more knowledgeable than Senior Designers but if they haven't kept up their skills they may be. So more weight should be given to the portfolio than the experience. 


• Beware of fancy language:
Does his/her website say things like "enhances brand equity with innovative solutions"? This roughly translates to "helping people recognize your stuff by making it look interesting." If you want a Power Point presentation that sells you with corporate buzz words, hire them. If you want to get to the point and skip the B.S., you might look further. Some designers use this corporate lingo to make themselves sound more expensive and justify their price point. Remember, it's the end design and how it helps sell your product, that matters. No one is going to be in the book store standing by your book to give the marketing spiel. The visual has to do that job in a few seconds and if you don't get it, the customer won't get it.

• Get a recommendation:
The person may have a great resume, portfolio and seem to have the whole package. However, they may also be an unreliable flake that doesn't return phone calls, talks badly about clients and keeps changing the price. Recommendations from friends or just calling his/her old clients will help you to know if there are any personality issues.

This is just a few tips that could expand to be a book long but who has time to read all that.

♥ Mary Lee

Sneak Peek at Mia Book 2

Though Mia Book 2 still has a ways to go, here's a peek at the work in progress.

I've Been Blogged!

In my grass roots solo effort to get my book to nudge up the massive pile of Amazon books so it's acutally possible to find, I emailed a few bloggers to request a review. Most said, no, don't look at ebooks, don't have the time etc. Then by some miracle, two wonderful women kindly took a look at Not Just a Princess and wrote a review! Yay!

You can see the reviews at the links below.
I'm a full-time mummy 
perfectlyimperfectmom.com


♥ Mary Lee

How to Get Reviews For an Indie Book

When I'm buying something on Amazon, I always look at reviews. Who doesn't? I want to know more about the product, if it's crap, has any issues, will catch on fire, etc. Since I started selling something on Amazon, I understood the importance of word-of-mouth but getting someone to look at my book and review it was a lot harder than I thought.

Here's some methods I've read about and/or tried myself:

Just wait: Without word-of-mouth or a lot of sales, my book was buried. So with no one reading it, there was no one to review it.

Give it away: KDP Select allows you to have up to 5 free days for you book. I put mine up for 2 days free and got over 2000 downloads. This resulted in 1 review. It did give me a little sales bump though.

Pay for it: For hundreds of dollars you can buy a review. This is cheating in my opinion and I can't afford it anyhow. Some places can make you pay $500 to get reviewed but can still give you a bad review. At least they're honest about your product but that's like taking someone's money and then kicking them in the shins.

Ask the Professionals: Professional reviewers won't touch books not represented by a middle-man with big marketing dollars, aka Indie, self-published books. 

Ask the Bloggers: The most popular bloggers get free stuff all the time. I've had a tiny bit of success with a couple but many rejection emails. Some won't review an ebook, a children's ebook, some don't have the time, some won't review without a giveaway for their readers and sometimes the email just goes to the spam box.

Ask the Writers: This has been a more time consuming but successful source of feedback for me. Other writers feel your pain and need reviews just like you do. Also, who knows more about writing than writers? Finding other authors in the same boat willing to swap books for a review got me several free books and a few great reviews. These are still real people with no big incentive to be dishonest and they write well. Of course, if you hate their book you might feel obligated to write something nice so they don't post a retaliating negative review of your book but the most ethical thing to do is just kindly decline the swap.

If you have a new book and would be interested in a review swap, you can email me a pdf and a amazon link at maryleebooks@yahoo.com

♥ Mary Lee

Announcement

Ever have one of those days where you get an idea in your head then you can't stop thinking about it until you dump everything out of your brain onto your computer? Well, that was yesterday for me and the idea turned into the first draft of Mia book 2. I could hear the not-so-nice voice in the back of my head saying, "Mary, you just finished book 1, take a break." Another voice says, "Hey, making books makes you happy, you've gotten some really positive feedback and it's selling better than average, so why not?" In conclusion, drumroll please....

Mia book 2, the sequel to "Not Just a Princess" is now officially, in the works!

♥ Mary Lee