So, after the overwhelming (ahem) response to my offer of a series of blogposts on the writing process, I came to two conclusions. First, on reflection, there’s hundreds of those buggers out there, and while my insights and truthful and thrilling journey might be unique, it isn’t… errr… very unique or I didn’t sell it well enough. Second, and more powerful realisation… screw you World, I’m doing it anyway 😊 It will be cathartic and if only one person picks up a good hint it’s worth it. It may not be as regular as originally planned though, as I’m hurt by your indifference to my kind offer, and cried myself to sleep last night. Okay, that last part is a lie, and the first tip is at the bottom of this post.
This weekend, as explained in my previous post, I’ll be uploading my ‘sampler’ What Kit Wrote Next, so you can decide what my next novel actually is! Check back and vote if you dare (I’m assuming it’s a bit like having something limited addition, if I dare you, the peer pressure will be overwhelming and you’ll feel compelled to take part. Probably.)
I will add one interesting writing process thing here that I recently discovered too though, for self-published authors, as it’s an issue I encountered this week, and took me a while to find the answer to. I sent out some advance review copies (ARCs) of my forthcoming novel, The Raven Sound, only to find out from a kindly reviewer that Amazon wouldn’t let them post the review, and the book was listed as ‘ineligible for review’. After being bounced around by Amazon KDP (publishing) helpdesk numerous times, and them e-mailing me several very interesting answers, though not to the question I actually asked, it turns out from my own searching that reviewers can’t post their thoughts if your book is in pre-publication (mine is due out May 1st), despite the fact I’ve seen many advance reviews for other things, and this fact this means that advance reviews are of limited use there. It may seem obvious but I’m thick. There isn’t a direct workaround but there are two ways to kind of circumvent it.
First, if you have a physical print copy available, the reviews don’t differentiate so it will show up for the e-book which isn’t released yet, or vice versa. Fine if you have a version available now.
Second, you can take soundbites of the review and add them as ‘editorial reviews’ in the author central pages yourself, but in a rather peculiar choice, you can only do this on the author page of the U.S. version (amazon.com rather than amazon.co.uk) of your book. It shows in them all, but you can’t add that anywhere except for the American homepage.
Hopefully that little snippet will save another writer a few days of searching round like I did. See, told you it could be helpful. Come back soon and help me pick my next book!
Stay safe,
Kit