I read 100K books in about a day. Rarely more than two. That’s not a brag, just a statement of fact. If, however, it takes me two weeks to read the first 19 pages of a book, there’s a problem…especially if chapter one is over thirty pages long. Fortunately in this case, I was reading another author’s WIP, so the problem could be remedied before publication.  But with the numbers of books I read and proof, I run into this problem again and again: chapter one sucks.

Lemme tell you something. Chapter one is typically the excerpt chapter Kindle, etc. pull from. It’s the one that should be on your web site, enticing readers to keep reading. It’s the one chapter that MUST ROCK.

A lot of people tell you that your first sentence must draw readers in. Meh. I don’t personally buy that. I’m savvy enough to give you a few chapters to hook me. But if you go on and on about nothing, dump more information in that first chapter than in the remainder of the book, blind me with secondary, tertiary and even quaternary characters, I’m going to put the book down before going much further.

Think about it.

1. Use every hastag under the sun to follow everything you say. #hashtag #sun #tweet #opinion #IsOnlyGoingToAnnoyMeAndMakeMeStopFollowingYou
2. Retweet horrific news from CNN or other news media. Seriously, if I wanted to read about children and puppies being tortured, I’ll follow the news myself. Every once in a while something that is *vital* to my existence, such as say, the zombie apocalypse is okay. Sending me the weather alerts for Boise, ID is not.
3. Stalk me. And I wish I were kidding, but some people have a bad habit of coming across as a little too smarmy and “I’m your number one fan” on Twitter. And I love my fans, but there are one or two of you who scare the crap out of me.
4. Ask me to retweet almost everything you tweet. You already have over 1,000 followers. I don’t. Why in the name of heaven am I going to retweet a plea asking people to come to your blog?
5. Don’t ever tweet anything personal or even of relevance, but do insist on signing up for Twitter horoscopes. Lemme clue you in. Those damned things show up Every. Goddamned. Morning. If you don’t pay attention to them, why do you subject me to them?
6. Use Twitter for the sole purpose of promoing your book or web site. Trust me, people are smart to this tactic.
7. And along the same note, tweeting the same information on a daily basis. Your tweets are only going to the people who follow you. The vast majority of your tweets have already been seen. I don’t need to see them five or six times.
8. Use services such as Twitterfeed to ALWAYS retweet random nonsense from other tweeters. Um, if I wanted to always know what they say, I’ll just follow them, ‘k?
9. Put the name of people you are replying to at the end of a tweet. All this does is force me into your conversation–which tends to be super disjointed since you’re conversing with forty or fifty people. @dontdothis

/rant

To all of you who don’t do the above, thank you! I enjoy your tweets and look forward to reading more. Did I miss anything?

p.s. If you haven’t found me on Twitter yet, please stop by! @dee_carney

You know what I’ve decided? You either love my stories or you hate them. Not much seems to go on in the land of in between.

C’est la vie.

Gasp!

Afterward I realized how light on sexoring it is. That’s gonna be a problem for somebody. lol. So, I sit here watching and waiting for the first review. Hoping people enjoy the action and forgive the hasty romance.

Reviews are subjective and for the most part, I enjoy the good ones and ignore the bad, but still, somehow that first one sets the tone for the ones to come. Here’s hoping reviewers show me some love.

(And please, totally ignore the fact that when I should be writing or editing or revising, I’m Googling my titles to see if any new reviews have popped up. Ignore it. Really.)

So what did I do? I went ahead and sent them my story, anyway. After four months of waiting, I called up their offices (very nice, people…well, except that one lady) and got to speak with Ms. Tuttle, the editor over there. She very politely and kindly told me yeah, no. But thanks.

I’ve since sent COLD BLOODED out to one of my current publishers for consideration. Keep checking back to see if they want it. In the meanwhile, here’s what I entered:

Commander Davana Black hates being in the human realm, but when two rogue demon juveniles make it their place of hiding, it’s her job to go in and retrieve them. If she’d had just the slightest clue she’d end up feeling the mating call of her kind while there, she might have requested a different assignment. Things only go from bad to worse when she discovers it’s a human male who sparks the rush of emotion…and worse still, other demons have picked up their connection and made him a target. Now, not only must she contend with finding the juveniles, somehow she has to fight nature’s call to him while reluctantly keeping him alive.

Quinn McVey never thought much of his heritage until the day the raven-haired beauty drags his family’s tragic secret into the light of day. It is because of it, and the lure she has on him, his once dull life is thrust into a battle between warring demon factions. In the frenzy of trying to stay one step ahead of their pursuers, he’ll do whatever it takes to convince the Commander he’s worthy of her…and her love.

I still think it’s pretty good. Hmph.

Tell me if you can spot the many, many, MANY flaws in his logic:

“What illegal books, they have been paid for, its kind of like a library you go get your book read it return it they buy it once like me or maybe they buy two copies, do you really expect some kind of resale fee or something on books I have purchased,  thats not going to happen and why should it, ford doesn’t get a cut on a second hand car.. and the library doesn’t charge for it service, but it does pay its staff.

I don’t re-sell any novels at all, my purchases are made available to others for FREE download.

Most downloads come from countries that have purchase restrictions on them, people in East Asia and South America are forbidden to buy new novels from the USA Many novels aren’t even available in Europe… Publishers are the demons of the book world not the people that buy the books. or the people that would buy if given the opportunity.

I only receive payments for my time maintaining the Blog and to PURCHASE new novels, so that you can earn your royalties and eat.”

What. The. Fuck?

I’ll be sending him a bill for each and every download from his site…so that I can, as he puts it, earn my royalties and eat.

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience to those who tried to get to those pages that way. For a day or two more, it’ll just take a little persistence in getting to them. But you’re smart people. You’ve already figured that out.

Anyway, I thought I’d also mention that I asked my site designer to give my site some pizzazz. Stay tuned for the new look. I’m hoping it’ll be available within the month, but who knows.

1) I haven’t blogged in what – a year?

2) I came home to over 1,200 spam posts on my blog today. WTF?

3) I didn’t send out my newsletter like I promised last weekend. And I have around five or six free books to give away! My bad!! I promise — it’s a four day weekend for me starting tomorrow and I will have absolutely no excuse. Newsletter (with winners!) goes out by Sunday evening.

Basically, they are removing/unranking all “adult content” items, particularly GLBTQ books, erotica and romance novels. I’m joining in the protest by what Smart Bitches has coined “googlebombing”. (My bad if that term belongs to someone else.)

Because right now I’m three sheets to the wind (apple martinis rock!), I’m simply going to copy/paste from Smart Bitches. This is their content and I wholeheartedly agree.

*****

It’s Google Bomb Time!

We did it for Bill Napoli. Now it’s Amazon’s turn. As always, fuckwittery should not go unrewarded. We propose the following entry be entered into the lexicon:

Amazon Rank

amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked

1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies).
2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.

Etymology: from 12 April 2009 removal of sales rank figures from books on Amazon.com containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com’s website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include “Bastard Out of Carolina,” “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” several romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people.

Example of usage: “I tried to do a report on Lady Chatterly’s Lover for English Lit, but my teacher amazon ranked me and I got an F on grounds that it was obscene.”

Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.”

Making this the top result, which is also dependent upon algorithms and shit, requires help from you savvy folks.

I’ve created a page with the definition for “amazon rank.” LINK TO http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank with “Amazon Rank” as the anchor text. The link should look like this:

Amazon Rank

This is known as Google-bombing.

Second of all: Urbandictionary.com. We’re creating a definition and if it’s approved, you can vote on it to increase its prominence. Link to definition to come soon.

All you have to do is link to the page using these words: Amazon Rank. The more you do it, the higher up in rank the page will go, and the more successful it will be. One would hope.

The goal: that “Amazon Rank” points to the definition that underscores Amazon.com’s shortminded censorship and inconsistent policing of what ought to be accessible to the book buying public.

ETA: As of 6:15pm EST/2:25pm SBTB Time, we are number one in google results for Amazon Rank. Holy smoke. Behold the power of angry bookfolk, Twitter, and the interweb.

******

ETA: Here ends End SBTB post.

Now I’m linking to this letter, just because it’s right on. Go Kassia!

http://booksquare.com/open-letter-to-amazon-regarding-recent-policy-changes/