Author Pages and Reviews

After seven days, I have eleven pre-orders! I know not all of them are friends and family, but they are all because of friends and family who also shared and posted about my book available for pre-order. Thank you to everyone for the support. It has been amazing. 

Now, some of you might be raising an eyebrow and saying, “Really? Eleven? That’s all?”

As you all know, I am currently a complete unknown as a writer. No one is searching for me just yet. People need to see my book first and then think it sounds interesting enough to buy. That is where advertising comes in, but I have decided to wait a little longer. More research is required to spend any money I put toward advertising as wisely as possible. 

Author Pages

Now that I have a book live, I have set up some of my author pages. Check out the links to follow me or see my pages: 

• Amazon: It was easy to set up at author.amazon.com once I had a book available to claim. For all my pages, I’m using the same photo and bio. I also linked my blog feed to it. I had to look up the RSS feed URL, but Amazon took a standard one with no problem. 
• Goodreads: My book did not show in any searches, even with the ISBN and pre-order release. I had to set up the book before I could claim it to get an author page. The blog feed was NOT working for me at first on Goodreads. It did not like the standard RSS or ATOM feed URLs. I used Google’s Feedburner to resolve the issue, so the feed is now live.  
• Bookbub (not a link yet): I have to be honest, I’m not familiar with Bookbub at all, and my author page is still pending review. They said it could take a couple of weeks. From what I have read, this is primarily for audio and ebooks. I have also heard there are some great promo options. I will have to wait to share more once I’m approved.
• Are there any I’m missing? If you have something you use or refer to all the time for books, please comment to let me know!

Reviews

As a reader, I had no idea how critical good reviews are for newer authors. You generally understand the concept because you look at the star rating and the number of reviews when shopping. As a shopper, you fail to internalize that people who like something are less likely to write about it. An author I follow does a bonus scene on her website when she reaches 100 reviews on a new release as an incentive to review. It is a good idea, but I’m not there yet with the content I have available. 

I’m going to release ARCs to early readers in exchange for honest reviews in mid-November. I’m targeting about 2-3 weeks ahead so that people are finishing it up just before or after the book is released. Amazon does not allow reviews on ebooks ahead of the release date, which is why I’m cutting it closer. I believe that is different for paperbacks. It is also different for Goodreads. One of my beta readers liked the book enough to write a full review and post it! 

Everything is off to a great start, and I hope it continues that way. I think my ultimate goal is to get a total of fifty reviews on Hidden Memory by the time the fourth and final in the series comes out. That gives me a couple of years to drum up more reviews with each release. While daunting, I think it is an achievable goal. I guess we will see how that starts in December! For now, I’m off to research advertising!