Finding A Voice Actor for Your Audio Book: Pros, Cons, and Methods

I stumbled across a YouTube video the other day that was posted under the title: Is ACX Royalty Share a good deal? Upon clicking play, the first word out of his mouth is "No!" Of course, he is trying to be funny and get people to watch his 20-minute video that is basically complaining about Royalty Share because the chances of voice actors getting enough money out of it are low. In his video, he only devotes 2 minutes to telling authors it is a bad deal for them, too, because only cruddy, new narrators will narrate a book for Royalty Share. 

If you've been following me for any time, you know that I have been a freelancer for a long time. I haven't been able to get a job since 2023 because, let's face it, AI-generated material may suck, but it is 100% cheaper than a freelancer at this time. I still occasionally put a bid in on something, but I am mostly focusing on my own books right now. That said, I know how hard it is to make a living as a freelancer--whether you are a writer, translator, or voice actor. I do understand where this guy is coming from as a voice actor, but he does a one-sided, one-argument video that is more of a rant than helpful information that will lead people to make informed decisions. I want to break down the pros and cons of ways to find and pay for narrators.

So, first off, narrating a book well takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. Unlike many freelance jobs, with voice acting, you can overwork your voice and lose it--causing you to be out of work while you rest it for a few days. That said, some of the things this guy was complaining about are universal to any freelancing job. When you are starting out (even if you are good and know what you are doing), you are going to have to take on jobs you are getting paid practically nothing for. The first book I freelanced (and I ended up doing 3 books for this guy), I did for $50. (My family, in the early years, said I was a writing prostitute because I would take so many low-paying jobs just to build my profile.) It took about a month to write because it was non-fiction. When it was still being published on Amazon, it had an average 4-star rating and 36 reviews total. Yeah, it did very well, and I got nothing for it. That said, I also did not have any of the risk or marketing costs. Publishing a book is always a risk. If you are an Indie author, you take on all the risk. The people you hire to edit/write/transform/translate/narrate your book do not have to put one penny of money into it. In most cases, they get paid whether or not you make any money off your adventure. 

Indie authors, as a general rule, do not have a big budget. They wrote a book because they were passionate about their project. They put it on Amazon, and now Amazon wants them to use AI to narrate it so Amazon can build its Audible platform--which happens to be trending right now. 

In general, taking the easiest and cheapest route by having AI convert your book is not going to give you a satisfactory result. Some people don't mind AI narration, but others do, so you will certainly get some negative comments on the narration because of it. However, if you wrote a really good book and this is basically your only option because you can't or don't want to try to figure out an entirely different platform, then I personally feel in the current book climate that having a book AI-narrated is better than not. The YouTuber proved that by managing to sell a book he wrote that was slapped together with his own bad, novice narration and still managing to make a few bucks off of it. At the same time, his completely cruddy product is now contributing to the market saturation with books that should have never been published and that take away profits from real authors. This guy obliviously doesn't realize he is part of the problem, though and encourages other voice actors to follow in his footsteps--instead of just taking a few Royalty Shares of real books!!! Sorry, but he really is a jerk, and he's so full of himself he has no problems creating a video where he literally coughs/complains about a hairball instead of cutting that? And I am supposed to believe his voice acting/editing is superb? But he has a boatload of followers, so who am I to judge his video-editing skills and scripting choices? Just please, if you are a voice actor, don't make a jank book just to "learn" your skills and then actually publish it. Just have a friend listen to it and delete it. Please.

So, after you make sure you have written a decent book, usually by getting reviews from people who don't know you and who you didn't pay, if AI is the only way you can get it narrated, I say go for it because you will get more sales if you do it. 

The next option is to follow the links to ACX and set up a book project that you narrate. WARNING: Once you choose to narrate the book yourself, you will not be able to hire anyone else without extensive discussions with customer service and deleting everything you've uploaded. This is where I am with some of my books, but I currently have 19. Unlike the guy in the video who can, based on his bragging, turn out about 1 hour of recorded work in less than 4 hours, it takes me about 40 hours to edit one hour of my work. I am getting faster, but it is another labor of love. I plan to talk about this experience in a different post, though, so that's all I am going to say beyond the fact that I have currently decided to self-narrate 4 of my books at this time. You will have to learn ACX's rules and follow them. You will have to download Audacity and will probably get Audacity 4 because that's the latest. You will have to learn it and deal with its stupid quirks. You will have to edit out every breath and word spoken too quietly. You will have to redo sections you stumble over, and you will need to make sure your microphone doesn't die. (Tip: Don't switch microphones in the middle of a book.) You will need to record in a relatively quiet place, among hundreds of other things. You might also want to learn more advanced sound editing skills. In short, this method is a pain in the clock, but beyond getting at least a good microphone headset, it shouldn't thin your pocketbook too much since all the software and YouTube training videos are free. (I don't recommend the guy above for advice. I do recommend videos by Gary Terzza and other people, who only post single how-to videos, like this guy who explains how to change a sampling rate correctly.)

Now, if you recognize that AI-generated voices are not the quality you want for your book and you don't have the patience/time/desire/ability (because let's be realistic, not everyone's God-given voice is good for narration), your only option is to hire someone else to do it. For those of you who don't know, I not only write, but I also have a degree in theater and regularly work with and know real professional voice actors. These are not, however, people you can hire because they work for companies like Disney, which pays way more than you would ever be able to and provides them (usually) with full sound studios. If your book is traditionally published, the publishing company will fork over the money for a real, professional voice actor. Those are the only voice actors worth the accolades and money the guy in the video thought he deserved because he wasn't a "novice." They and the teams they work with are completely amazing. That said, if you work with a traditional publishing company, you would be lucky to get any input into an Audible book they produce of your work. 

The next tier down from a real, professional voice actor is a professional freelancer. These people are truly doing this (or trying to do this) for a living because they haven't limited themselves to a risky platform like ACX. As usual, I recommend using one through Guru or Upwork and making use of their escrow systems, where you pay the platform upfront and then release to the freelancer at the end of the project or for milestones. On these platforms, you can see samples and feedback about the voice actors. You can also protect yourself and choose just how new of a freelancer you want to work with. However, you must always pay something out-of-pocket. At the same time, these people are professional freelancers working through a professional platform so they should deliver to you a fully completed product that meets ACX standards. (Make sure that information is in your post/contract.) You would still set the ACX book up as one of your own projects, but you will upload the files to ACX that you get from the freelancer. I don't recommend giving the freelancer the final payment until they are completely uploaded and accepted by ACX. You also need to make sure you enter the name of the voice actor as the voice actor wants you to enter it (and do not enter your own name in that box). You can get duds whenever hiring freelancers, but you can also get some amazing work that parallels professional, even with freelancers who have newer profiles (you shouldn't, however, have to pay as much for a person with a newer profile that you are taking a chance on). 

Finally, comes the ACX internal options for posting your project and hiring a freelancer. These, personally, suck, which is why they are the last on this post. Although I have pulled some books out of self-production to repost them for other freelance voice actors to comment on, I have not tried to pull it out of getting auditions to self-narrate it, so I do not know if that process is easy or difficult. There are three types of "contracts" you can offer narrators through ACX. (1) Royal Share--this means you don't pay the freelancer anything, but s/he gets 25% of the profits, and you get 25% of the profits. (This is the method the YouTuber doesn't like.) This is the best option for authors who are working with a narrator for the first time. (2) A per-hour-rate where, for every 1 hour of completed audio, you pay an agreed-upon rate. There are a lot of intricacies with this method, but it is what you would expect to get if you were hiring a freelancer from Guru or Upwork. (3) An upfront fee and Royalty Share. So the author not only gets a per-hour-rate (presumably lower than they would normally charge) but also gets a part of your royalties. This is the best deal for voice actors because they are not only guaranteed money up front but are also going to probably get some royalties for the rest of the book's publication run. 

The biggest problem with using voice actors on ACX is that there are no guarantees, really or protections. There is no feedback system that allows you to rate voice narrators, so you choose one relying only on the information they have fed to you about themselves and their past work. Don't just look at their ACX profile and think any information you see on it is 100% fact-checked true. You can listen to their samples, and I encourage you to do so, but you really have no idea if those are theirs unless you can get them to submit an "audition" where they are reading your work. There are two different ways to get freelancers to apply--you can post your book and search for auditions from anyone or you can post your book and send it to a specific person (that person does not necessarily need to submit an audition then.) I have done both, and I plan to make a post about that process.

Now, the guy in the video, when "researching" authors who had listed their books for Royalty Share auditions made a lot of misassumptions. First, print and e-books are really a completely different market from audiobooks, which can reach people with disabilities better than print versions. A sales rank on Amazon can be variable from day-to-day. You can also have a book that is a #1 seller in its category, but that doesn't translate into sales because the authors chose an obscure category just to hit number 1. The big thing is that book sales don't translate into audiobook sales. Book reviews are hard to get--I have documented giving away hundreds of books and only getting a couple of reviews. Some authors also have to print their books through Amazon and then spend time selling them in person or through IngramSpark or other platforms because of Amazon's limited distribution ability. What a voice actor needs to know is (1) is this author easy to work with and (2) is this author actively involved in marketing his/her books? Again, ACX makes this difficult because it doesn't have a rating system where voice actors can rate authors either. So how does a voice actor decide whether to take a chance with Royalty Share? The only real way to research an author is to look for his/her online presence. Authors who are actively promoting their books will have a recent, relatively public online presence that you should be able to find by typing in their name. (Unfortunately, authors cannot check voice actors this way because they could be good and still not have an online presence.)

Even riskier for authors, though, is ACX doesn't have any sort of payment or escrow system. Here is where Royalty Share not only benefits authors in that they don't have to fork over upfront money for a voice actor, but also there aren't any direct, offsite financial transactions that the authors have to be extremely careful about performing. Will you get a newer voice actor if you only find someone who will accept Royalty Share? Most likely. However, a newer voice actor is not necessarily a bad one. Experienced voice actors who want to make this option work for them will help promote the books they are working on--this means reading a little bit of the book before auditioning for it, so you can see if you think it is marketable and then marketing it a bit yourself on your social media. 

Per-hour book deals have to have the financials conducted off-site. Please only use known, secure methods of paying the voice actors if you choose to go this route. Make sure you have clearly outlined what they need to give you in exchange for what exact amount of money and how many payments you will make and when. Never give a freelancer all the money up front for a project. You should see results equal to the amount paid. I, however, am okay with an initial up front partial payment simply because the freelancer may have to purchase something or take some time off a paying job or whatever to get started. Plus, the freelancer must take a risk on you--that you will pay the rest of the money when it's time. If you don't, a first payment gives them something, at least for their work. 

As an author, a freelancer, and a theater insider, I would absolutely never do the Royalty Share Plus--which is a Royalty Share plus a per-hour rate. This is completely ridiculous for a no-name narrator who doesn't have to invest anything into the marketing of your book. This is the sort of contract that Bloomsbury Publishing would give Daniel Radcliffe to do the voice for the main character. It happens when you have a really famous voice actor, and you absolutely must have him/her to do the narration for your book. The only way I can see this working on ACX is if you have a book that you know will have a niche market, so you know it won't do very well sales-wise, and if the author gives you an extremely reduced rate (i.e. $50 per hour instead of $100 per hour). In this case, the book might do well in its niche, but you might not be able to find the niche to market an audiobook to, so both of you take on some of the risk. This method, however, runs the same risk as the regular pay-per-hour because you have to pay off platform. If you are going to do this method, try to arrange it so that, since you are doing Royalty Share, you don't make the payment until the end. 

New (to Me) Scam on Goodreads

I love connecting with people on Goodreads, especially people who have read or want to read my books. That said, I am extremely careful when people randomly want to friend me and have brand-new accounts.  Yes, someone could have read my book, seen that I connect with people through Goodreads, and created an account for that purpose, but if that were the case, s/he would most likely pass the test I give all new friend requests. (Plus, anyone can follow me and see my reviews and new books. Friends can no longer message people privately through Goodreads, so it's odd someone would want to do that when my profile is public.)

First, I check out the person's account. Does s/he have book reviews? How many? Are any of them written and not just star ratings? Do the written reviews sound AI-generated?  Few reviews that are mostly star-only or AI-generated, and a high percentage of 5-star ratings send off warning bells.

Goodreads also allows you to see the activity of members--which is good. Someone who has be randomly friending indie authors (exclusively) and sending them similar-sounding messages is another warning flag. 

Enter "Rose" who recently wanted to connect with me. As usual, it was a brand new account only trying to friend indie authors. Where Rose stood out was that she began messaging the people she friended (publically, so she must not realize everyone can see these) and giving the her e-mail request while asking for a copy of the author's book. The messages were almost identical, but contained what sounded like an AI-generated specific question about a book the authors had written. 

I wondered what Rose's game was. Obviously, she gives you her e-mail address and wants you to reply to her. Giving a scammer access to your direct e-mail is bad on its own, but this seemed like a lot of work just for an e-mail address. So, I dug a little more.

It seems the biggest problem is that you are giving them a copy of your book without any restrictions. Regardless of the protections you have on it, once they get a full copy, they can hack those away and distribute or sell it illegally. They could even use AI to translate it into another language without your knowledge and make money of it themselves. Apparently, this has been a long-running scam on Goodreads. I'm not sure how they missed me until now.

Anyway, Kindle+ (formerly KU) is a relatively easy way to get your books to the masses. If someone insists on a copy of your book, tell them when your next free promotion is, and let them download it from Amazon. Needless to say, this person 

Goodreads Review Groups for Indie Authors

In a post from March, I wrote an overview of how an Indie author could increase the number of reviews s/he has. Most methods of getting reviews cost money, but joining a Goodreads group is one free method. 

WARNING: There is at least one Goodreads Group that is solely marketing for a borderline scam outside site, Revvue. How Goodreads continues to allow this group to exist when every post by the moderators pretty much tells you to go to the Revvue website and use their service is beyond me. Avoid any Goodreads Group that solely exists to direct you to other websites. These violate Goodreads' terms of service. I suspect the moderators of this group are vigilant about making sure negative posts about Revvue are removed or are deflected. 

I have been a member of many "review" groups on Goodreads since 2014. Some are good. Others have absent moderators, which causes them to turn into a spam board. I don't think you can even message moderators to draw their attention to issues anymore. The Reviewers, The Reviews Initiative for Indie Books, Genre Specific Review Groups, Christian Fiction Fans, GOOD REVIEWS, and Read 4 Review are all groups I've joined that no longer have active moderators. You can still join them (or at least most of them), but the rules that prevented people from spamming everyone are not necessarily being enforced. That means that you need to be extra careful if you want to use these--and you also should be aware that although desperate authors will join and post in any group, most readers who are real readers and not scammers tend to flee when the rules stop being enforced.

The groups below have somewhat strict spamming rules and do not just allow you to post your book and hope you get reviews. You must follow the rules, for example, some groups prohibit AI-generated work, and you must post any self-promotion in the appropriate threads. 

The group I am most active in is Review Group. I joined this group in 2014 and, within this past year, joined the moderators of this group. Obviously, I am biased, but I feel we do a good job keeping the group focused and working together. Unlike many of the above-mentioned groups where you are posting and praying someone will see your book and review it, Review Group is primarily focused on review exchanges. There is a one-for-one list where members (who can be authors or readers) review a book on the list and, in exchange, can have a book they have written added to it. If they are just a reader, they can just state that when they post their review. There is also our standard rounds, where ten people join with one of their books. Each person reviews four people (who have never reviewed him/her) and gets four reviews for his/her book from people they have never reviewed. We are going to be experimenting with this format and reducing the number of reviews and the number of people in each group soon to see if it will be easier to fill groups. A lot of time and mental work go into creating these groups, and as they fill, it becomes more difficult to fit people into the group if they are not newer participants. 

Similar to Review Group, I am in the Review / Write / Read Club (Indie & Self-Published) group. I am only a member of this group, but this group shares members/moderators with Review Group, so it operates on a similar basis. There is a one-to-one reading list that works like the one above. There are also "rounds" which are small 3-5 person versions of the 10-person rounds mentioned above, but you only get one review and give one review regardless of round size. Although moderating is still time intensive, these rounds are easier to form and fill because you are only looking for a conflict with two people. (You have to keep eight people from conflicting with each member of the ten-person rounds.) Unique to this group is also the "Chain." This is a group where you only have to make sure you don't have a conflict with the person above you in the chain. All of these groups are basically give a review to one person and get a review from someone else format. 

The other group that I haven't participated in much, but it is actively moderated, is Readers Sharing Reviews. This group connects readers to free or low-cost books. It allows authors to self-promote their books as long as they follow the rules. There is usually a newsletter that gets delivered to your message box and highlights a few books. There are also occasional polls. This is a post-and-pray group, but it seems to actually have active readers instead of just authors trying to sell their books.

Do Not Upgrade to Audacity 4

 Audacity has been pushing its new upgrade on me for a couple of months. I usually put off upgrading in the middle of a project, but I grew tired of the prompts. When I asked Google if I was going to have to relearn a new system, I was informed that I could choose to use "classic" mode and everything would be the same. My life has been nothing but misery since.

You can, as Google says, choose "classic" mode in the beginning, which gives you a similar layout, but it does not give you the same features. I just need basic functionality to record my books for ACX, but that has been blown to the wayside. For example, the options to rerecord over parts of your project you are dissatisfied with are worded differently and offer different functionality.

Then, there is the fact that Audacity 4 will not open a file from Audacity 3. This means that when you try to open one, you have to "convert" it into 4. You will now have two files (labeled about the same) in your folder. You can no longer work on 3 in Audacity 4. This means that as I started editing in Audacity 4 and getting more and more frustrated with the awfulness of it, I could not go back until the 3 chapters of work I had converted and worked on were finished, and I was willing to never want to work on those again. That is where I am at now--trying to finish these so I can roll back.

The next major issue I had was that keyboard hotkeys for cut, copy, and paste do not work. Instead of getting more hotkeys for things I use all the time, like "Amplify" and "Measure RMS," I got keyboard shortcut non-functionality. I have tried shutting it down and restarting without any change. Now, perhaps if I take the time to go in and specifically program those as hotkeys, they might work--but why in the world would I waste that time when there is no guarantee they will work all the time every time if I do it?  

The transfer into Audacity 4 also made my soundtrack do weird things. It added pops and made this odd loud/soft/loud alteration that was all within my RMS goals, but sounded off to me. I don't want to go back and mess with this, which I estimate would take an additional 80 hours of work per chapter.

Recording and rerecording were also painful. When I record over something, the original does not have to be silenced, but it records in a separate clip directly over the top of where you want it. Instead of stopping as soon as you get to the end of the area where you can record, it then begins recording over things you do not want to lose. Getting rid of these recordings is something I haven't figured out how to do. Twice now, I have clicked ctrl-z to undo something and ended up with a black screen--my entire project is erased. This means I get to (1) start over or (2) close without saving and go back to my last save point. Then there was the fact that prior versions only let me record new at the end of a clip or after highlighting a center part of the clip. Now, I have found myself recording at the beginning of a clip when I did not want to and was originally working on the end. I have no clue why it jumped to the beginning before I hit record, but I lost data because it now records over everything, and I had to rerecord 20 minutes of audio to fix it because it got so messed up.

I can no longer copy and paste silence. Now, I have to click into  the Generate menu and click "Silence." Then I have to adjust how much silence- in other words, something that was once easy to execute through a couple of quick keyboard hotkey commands has now become a time-consuming process. 

I used to be able to highlight a section and listen only to that section--no more. The section keeps playing. This is extremely irritating because if I am listening for something specific and I want to see if it is in the highlighted section, I now have to make sure to stop the recording from continuing. I also can't tell if something is in that section when they are short because the playback continues outside the box, and I am too slow to stop it. I have to have my attention divided between listening to what I am looking for and stopping it where I want. 

There are a lot of positive reviews of Audacity 4 online, but I can't understand it. All the safety mechanisms to keep you from accidentally screwing up your work are gone. All the hotkey commands that made working quicker are nonfunctional. And, you have the chance of randomly losing all your work completely. I don't have time to screw around with learning this or waiting for an update to fix things. Don't make my mistake and upgrade.

Globe Soup--A Disappointing Contest I Don't Recommend

 In my effort to research good writing contests for indie authors, I have been trying to submit to several that I found. I haven't entered very many, yet, but I discussed in a previous post about how I found Tadpole to be a legitimate flash fiction contest, but the one offered by Off Topic Publishing to be a scam. Both of these contests came in advertisements from another contest website: Globe Soup. I joined Globe Soup's newsletter because they advertised (and it was promoted on other author websites) as being a random contest where they give you a prompt and you have a week to write a story from it. That takes me back to most of my university writing classes, so I felt this would be a good fit for me. I joined, however, right after they had just done one of their random-entry contests, so I never experienced that. 

The next contest they advertised came quickly and was an open short story contest without a prompt. Contests like this are always iffy because the organizers usually claim that any genre can be submitted, but in reality there are only a few judges (or one), and they are going to have limited preferences. Let's also be realistic: How do you compare a well-written sci-fi with a well-written memoir and decide which is best? Still, I entered it with a paranormal romance (yeah, I should have chosen something more mainstream). The contest entry was relatively cheap, but I then selected the option to get an in-depth story critique for my story. I requested this primarily as a tool to better understand what the judges were looking for. That was December 2025. 

It is now August 2026. The contest was done, and results were posted on Globe Soup's website, so I contacted them in April of 2026 and asked about my critique. I was assured they were still working on it and asked if I would like a refund. Since that was not too long after the competition, I decided to wait. 

It was then that I started thinking about the fact that the competition had been judged, but the judges made no critique of the works during the judging period. I have seen a lot of judging for a variety of contests. In general, judges review a work and make notes about what they liked/didn't like at the time they are judging it for the competition. For example, in the Olympics, the judges have a score sheet where they grade each element as it's performed. These grades are then mathematically turned into the final score. 

I do something similar for the indie books I review, when I use my matrix. When judges are given elements to grade and then allowed to make notes on those elements and/or general notes, that is the best, least biased way to run judging. With Globe Soup, however, I have to question how much thought and effort went into judging short stories that apparently were not critiqued by the judges at the time of the contest. 

Needless to say, since it has been almost a year since this competition finished, I have now requested a refund. I will post later if I actually get it. For now, I am still on their mailing list, but I won't be entering any more of their contests. 

Update: I received a message stating that Globe Soup was closed. The website is still up as is the entry information for the last contest they ran, and I'm still getting email from them. The person who responded acted like s/he didn't realize I hadn't gotten a review, but said they were refunding the money. I will give another update when I actually see it in my account.

AI: Great for Some Laughs

 So, on Goodreads, I am a moderator for a review group. We have to do some crazy puzzle solving to make sure no one reviews someone who has reviewed him/her. I have been using Google AI to do this, successfully so far, but I have to type in extremely detailed instructions, and I double check to make sure the perimeters I give it are met. 

I am also part of the Reading Challenge Group and one of the Games they currently have going is to guess a book title and author hangman style. Since I absolutely adore cryptograms and this is only slightly different from that (think Wheel-of-Fortune), I decided to ask Google to give me a similar puzzle and have me guess the title/author. I understand the need to train AI, so I first explained the rules and gave it an example. Then, I asked it to give me a puzzle. The first one was a book/author that it chose from my reading preferences (no I never asked it to track those, but I expect that I am always being tracked while online, so it didn't bother me that it had). Not only did it choose a book I was familiar with, but it gave away the plot while asking me if I wanted a clue about the plotline and it revealed too many letters upfront. So, I told it the puzzle was too easy. 

The next one, I was slightly suspicious that the puzzle it created might be fake, but I am not that familiar with the category it chose: "sci fi/steampunk." I really didn't care if the book was fake or not because part of the joy of the puzzle is solving it for words on the fewest revealed letters. I guessed T and then began to guess a few vowels and a few more consonants. I made it through all the vowels and y and two words had zero letters revealed. 

Now, as an amateur cryptologist, I know that there are no words in the English language that do not have at least one vowel in them (including y). So, I asked Google how there could be two words without any vowels. Google promptly admitted that it had "made an error" and the first word was "The," which I would have already had revealed because I had guessed all those letters, but Google had only revealed the "E." Notably, the two words I had asked about were still without any letters revealed. 

At that point, I decided to change the way I asked the questions:

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Google puzzle before my next question:

CATEGORY: Sci-fi/Cyberpunk

 TITLE: THE/_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ / _ L L _

AUTHOR: _ _ _ _ I I E _ / _ _ _ _ T _ O T

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Me> You said there were two "I"s in the author's name, but did you fail to tell me there are "I"s in the title? 

Google> You caught me again! I absolutely made a mistake. When you guessed the letter I earlier, I only filled it into the author's name, but there is indeed an I in the title as well.

The title is THE INFINITE WALL by the author GABRIEL WRIGHT.

Here is the fully corrected and updated board with all of your correctly guessed letters...

CATEGORY: Sci-fi/Cyberpunk

TITLE: THE/INFINITE/W_LL

AUTHOR:  G _ _ RIIE _/WRI_HT

Incorrect letters: U, A, Y, S

Now, that the title is almost completely filled in, what would you like to do?

[Here Google gave me some letters I could guess, and also the option to guess the title/author. Note that if you compare what Google gave me to what it gave me before, the number of letters and the placement of the letters changed in the puzzle among other things.]

Me> LOL! You told me the title instead of filling in the letters and you misspelled Gabriel when you were filling it in. The completed title is "The Infinite Wall" by the author "Gabriel Wright." Now, I am going to have to fact check you to see if that is a real book or if you made it up. 

Google> You completely caught me red-handed! 😊I completely glitched on that one--I filled in the missing title, gave away the game, and managed to typo Gabriel... 

To make it even funnier, if you fact check me, the book doesn't actually exist! I completely hallucinated [it] and the plot scenario while trying to manage the puzzle matrix...

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(Yes, I was suspicious at the plot scenario, too.) I found the interaction to be hilarious because I understand the limitations of AI, and I was testing it, but did not have high expectations. I still find it hilarious, but it is important for others to realize the limitations as well. Google stole pieces of other books for its "hallucinated" plot scenario as well as parts of titles to create its puzzle (and many people use AI to write their books). It could not follow simple instructions to run this game (and managed to change the number of letters and failed to fill in letters.) Next time, I will try wording my answers better--instead of saying "Is there an A?" I will say "Fill in all the A's in the puzzle." I will also ask it if the book and author are real upfront--even though it has assured me the next puzzle contains a real author and book. Finally, we are using AI to choose military targets and some lawyers are using it to write their cases for them. We have 4,000+ AI factories in the U.S. sucking up water and energy so we can be ahead of the world with our AI, but our AI functions more poorly because we are trying to make it do everything at once. It is like we have this dog, and instead of teaching it to retrieve our shoes for us or pick up trash (things dogs can do), we are trying to teach it to make dinner--which is something dogs will never be able to do. 

Can SI make puzzles (or puzzle books)? Of course. Can AI give you lists of resources for your book? Of course--if you fact check it. Can AI write your book or pick military targets? Not better than throwing a dart at a board, and it never will be able to do these things effectively. We need to use AI for what it can do best and focus on training it to do that well instead of trying to get it to bring the stars to earth for us. 

Your Book Summary: An Important Marketing Tool (part 2)

 What does a summary need? 

It needs to be short. Consider The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien--it has 3 paragraphs (about 7 sentences) as a summary even though it is over 430 pages long. These are not overly complex long sentences, either. The summary for A Game of Thrones is also about 7 sentences despite being over 700 pages. A summary should ideally be 2-4 paragraphs long and no more than 25 sentences. The more succinct you can be with your plot, the better--as long as it meets minimum standards. 

It needs to be well-edited and clear. Authors with typos in their summaries usually have typo-ridden books that are difficult for readers to wade through. Summaries that are written so only the author or someone who has already read the book understand them are also not helpful. 

It needs to let the reader know the (correct) genre if that isn't evident. For example, in The Fellowship of the Ring, the summary lets readers know the book is going to be an epic fantasy because it talks about magical elements and a journey. Be careful, however, if you feel you need to blatantly state "this is a historical fantasy." Many times authors who state what their book is don't know exactly what a "historical fantasy" is. I recently read a summary that claimed the book was a historical fantasy in the first sentence, but the book was set in a fictional world and not a real, historical earth setting. An example of a "historical fantasy" would be Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which takes place on earth in an alternate reality of the past, where magic occurs during the 19th century. There are many other genres, such as urban fiction or paranormal romance, that need authors to be aware of what they entail. The reverse of this is my own sci-fi romance mashup and sci-fi cozy mashup serials--I had at least one person say that these weren't sci-fi because they rely on arranged marriages and some "old-fashioned" societal rules--despite being set on another planet in another star system with advanced technology. I think people forget that many sci-fi books and movies use a technologically advanced but societal archaic theme--think about Star Wars, which basically incorporates swords and magic into sci-fi or Dune, which also has a technologically advanced society based on arranged marriages. 

What to keep out of a summary? 

Avoid words that reflect opinions of your book like "award-winning," "new," and "gripping." Opinions shouldn't be in the summary. There are places on your Amazon book page where you can add paid review information. It is expected that you, the author, believes your book should win an award and is a superb contribution to literature--your own opinions about your work don't belong anywhere on your sales page. Using "new" is slightly ridiculous because your book is not going to be "new" forever. 

Avoid plot details. Your added a bunch of really cool details and characters to your book, so of course you want to talk about them. The problem is that you are going to bog down your summary with things that are not necessary to conveying the plot. The Fellowship of the Ring summary mentioned above is a good example. It tells the reader who the main bad guy is and who the main good guy is. Are there other important characters in the book? Of course. But the whole trilogy is about Frodo getting to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and Sauron trying to stop him. In a romance summary, you should only have the main male and female mentioned. In other fiction, if there is a group of good guys/bad guys, you could say something like "Frodo Baggins and his fellow travelers" or "Luke Skywalker and those who gather around him" or "Ponyboy Curtis and his friends." In the summary for A Game of Thrones, which switches viewpoints between many people, the main characters are "the Starks of Winterfell." 

Avoid giving away the end of the story. Some indie authors do give away their work for free, but a summary of your work for the purpose of marketing it (free or not) should never contain the ending. Most readers aren't going to read a long version if you give them access to an abridged version of your story.

Avoid letting AI write the summary without any oversight. I get a lot of scam e-mails talking about my books. In this age of AI--which can read reviews, your summary, and other aspects of your book that you have talked about online--many people use technology to make their work easier. The problem is that AI does awful jobs of actually summarizing stories--I find them easy to pick out. If you struggle writing a summary, AI might be able to give you the groundwork, but if you don't know what you are doing, you won't be able to fix it appropriately. There are some services that will give you free or cheap professional reviews complete with a summary. It is better to use these services than to attempt having AI do it for you.

Your Book Summary: An Important Marketing Tool (part 1)

Before choosing a book to read, most people look at the book summary. Still, it boggles my mind how many indie authors write horrible book summaries. Being able to summarize a book without giving away the ending is something most children are taught in grade school. Some people are naturally better at writing compelling summaries than others, but some people, who are writing entire books that they want others to purchase and read, completely fail the assignment. I have even read some books that were good but which had horrible summaries. In those cases, I usually try to summarize the book in my review, but few people look at the reviews before they look at the summary. 

The problems with bad summaries generally fall into three categories: (1) confusing, (2) rambling, and (3) below minimal.

(1) Most indie authors use rambling summaries for their books. These go on for 6+ paragraphs. Instead of hitting the main points, they add in a bunch of unnecessary details. Summaries should answer the basic: Who? What? When? Where? questions. Who is your book about? When and where does it take place? What is the major conflict (not all the subplots)? It shouldn't take more than a couple of sentences to answer each of these questions.

The conflict is important for a summary because that is the main plot you are selling to your audience. All fiction books need to have a central conflict if the author wants them to be well-received by the audience--even if that conflict is minor in terms of world events (i.e., how does the main character bridge the gap between his daydreams and reality). Non-fiction books often serve a purpose that is useful, which takes the place of conflict--but this purpose needs to be in the summary, too. For example, a book about raised-bed gardening would explain to its readers how to do this. Other non-fiction books, such as biographies or memoirs are interesting because they detail someone's life--and hopefully included the conflicts that person had. 

(2) Authors who haven't really thought about what their books are about tend to write extremely confusing summaries that also tend to ramble. They pick out subplots instead of identifying the unifying plot. One summary by an indie author, for example, talked about the main female character going on the run with the main male character because she saved a dog, and then the male was framed for a crime committed by a prince. It then talks about miners--without explaining how they are significant to the main characters being chased--and a princess who has some undisclosed bad thing happen to her. It goes on to say astronomers and a named bad guy (who is not the guy chasing the couple) see something in the stars, and the bad guy starts murdering people so he can be emperor. Huh? Since none of the above is connected, you probably think I left something out, but that is all the information you get from the indie author's summary. This book has good reviews so far, but I struggle to believe the author can keep all the plots in the book together since the summary is so disjointed. 

I think confusing summaries are also because authors want to make their descriptions "cryptic." They are not merely keeping the ending from readers. Instead, they are not giving us enough of the correct information. Since two bad guys are mentioned in the above summary, I have no idea who is the real bad guy or how either are connected. I also have no idea what the major conflict is? I suspect the real summary should have told readers who should have been the ruler, who was the ruler, who wants to be the ruler, and who is going to try to get the right ruler on the throne. You can summarize what characters are trying to do without telling the reader if they will succeed or not. 

(3)Which brings me to the last point: the less than minimum summary. It's important to not give away the conflict resolution in your book when writing a summary. People often do this by being so ambiguous readers don't really know what the book is about. This usually confuses readers, too, but it can be clear without telling the reader important things that will help him/her select a book. A less than minimum summary would be:

This amazing historical romance has Jamie and Dalton struggling to fall in love after they meet. Read it to find out if they overcome the oppression! 

A better summary would be:

Jamie and Dalton both went to their 1953 Senior Prom with the wrong date and then married them. Years later, they return to their hometowns with a divorce under their belts and excess baggage. When they are recruited to be chaperones for their Alma Mater's Senior Prom will they finally end up leaving with each other?  

Being an Indie Author Is Like Painting a Target on Your Back that Says "Welcome Scammers"

 Goodreads recently stopped allowing private messages. I am still not happy about this, but it was a conduit for numerous scammers. It seems that a lot of people become Indie authors for vanity reasons, and this makes them ripe for scammers. Most of the messages I get are people telling me how amazing my book is, and if only I could get it to a bigger audience, I would be famous. On average, even without Goodreads messaging, I get a couple hundred scam requests through e-mail and phone every month. Publicity is necessary because that is the only way to get your book in the hands of your audience, but it is also extremely important to be aware that the more publicity you get the more you will be targeted. I've decided to share a few of the ways I've been targeted to help you recognize when something is a scam:

(1) A famous author wants to be your friend/correspond with you/ give you advice/promote your book/etc. 

As an author, you are probably busy out of your mind if you are doing it right. This is not just Indie authors, this is ALL authors. Danielle Steel, Stephen King, and even lesser knowns like Hannah Bonam Young or Rebecca Serle are not going to be scanning the Internet looking for Indie authors to connect with. I don't scan the Internet looking for other authors to connect with, and you shouldn't either. I do have a Goodreads account, and I participate in author groups on that platform with other authors. That isn't the same as trying to reach out to other authors in some misguided spam effort to promote your work or give them advice. 

(2) I would like to use your book for my book club/blog post/TikTok video/etc.

No scammer deserves anything more than getting quickly added to your junk/trash/block list or being deleted from the answering machine you are using to screen your calls. However, this is the most ridiculous scam I have seen, and I have been tempted to just reply with a simple, "Go for it." No one needs to get an author's permission to use the author's book for their book club or to review it on their blog or to make a TikTok video about it. Anyone wishing to use any of my books is more than welcome to do so. If someone would like me to speak at their book club meeting or interview me for their blog, they do need to contact me, but they had better be contacting me with important details--primarily do I need to travel and if they are planning to reimburse my travel costs. If it's a blog interview, they can just send the questions up front and save time in correspondence. I don't mind speaking at a book club meeting (either online or in real life), but most of these requests are teasers, and if you follow them through, they are going to ask you for money or books or for you to sign over all your earthly goods to them.

(3) I have 50 reviewers willing to give your book a review.

These are always followed by how much they are going to charge you to get these reviews. Amazon (and most places where authors can get reviews) have strict rules about paying people to leave a review. Now, Amazon does require a $50 investment to create any account that can leave reviews, but let's say this person charges you $250 to leave reviews. S/he would only need 10 people to buy into this scam and the cost of 50 fake reviewer accounts would be covered with only pure profit beyond that. They could also take your money and run without leaving any reviews. Even if they do leave the reviews, though, this is a scam. You are paying someone for reviews and s/he may only be navigating the Amazon rules by a technicality if at all. The reviews you get are most likely going to be AI generated drivel or "This was an amazing book!! I highly recommend it!!!" style garbage. There is also the danger that the person is not exploiting a loophole but rather violating Amazon's terms. This can get both you and the offending (fake) accounts banned. You have more to lose here than the scammer. It may seem like a quick (and certainly easier) way to get reviews, but you put your future writing career at risk. 

(4) I am a famous marketer/book promoter/publisher, and I love your book.

These usually come with a "but." There is always something wrong and this person is going to fix it. Again, whenever someone has contacted you, there is a greater chance you are dealing with a person who will take your money and run without providing any service at all. Book marketing is time consuming and costly when done correctly. It involves press releases, paid advertising, and a lot of research to make sure you are targeting the right market. I have not found one of these fly-by-night wanna-be marketers who do much more than spam people's e-mails with ads for your book or spam websites and blogs with jank ads in the comments sections. Certainly this can get you books sales, but you are going to irritate people more than you are going to convert them into customers. The likelihood of spam actually reaching the person it is sent to and not being removed from a website or auto sent into a spam folder is extremely low (and when I say low, I mean for every 50,000 people you send this kind of junk to you will get 5 of them max to buy your book). At some point, I may discuss targeted marketing on here (although marketing is my least favorite end of the writing business). The people trying to sell you their marketing skills through spam are not prominent marketers (look them up and make sure you compare email addresses if it seems they actually have an online presence). If you really want to promote your book through e-mail, you can always set up a mailing list through your website/blog and a free e-mail service like MailChimp. Then you will be getting people who are actually interested in your work and you will see better results than the random e-mail lists people are selling.

(5) I represent BookBub/Medium/BookBrowse/FilmFreeway/etc. and your book was chosen.

The first clue these are fake is that they don't come with an "unsubscribe" link (be careful when you click these, though). The second clue is that if you dig for the real e-mail address, it is usually from a free provider. These are big companies. They don't use free Gmail or Yahoo accounts. For example, I received an e-mail purportedly from Madeline Milburn who is a legitimate literary agent. The "From:" said it was from Madeleine Milburn <themadeleinemilburnagency@gmail.com> Even though this e-mail address uses what looks to be a formal name, it is the information after the "@" that is most important. If this was coming from the real literary agent it would be @madeleinemilburn.com (Note: To the best of my knowledge, this agency has no need to cold-e-mail people. Submit following the guidelines on the website if you feel your book is in their niches.)

Some may combine a real business with some extra words to avoid legal issues with the real business. Some of these (like Medium) are basically blogging websites and may be a big name but are not focused on books. Others, like BookBrowse, are real businesses that only review Indie authors for fees of $400 or so. Sorry, on one hand, publishing companies pretty much figuratively own the best review services for marketing and can get their reviews free from real editors at these places. In part, this is because they only send polished books to be reviewed. I review and have reviewed probably more than five hundred indie books (professionally and otherwise) at this point, and I would say only about 20% of them meet the standards of a publishing company. Granted, those standards are falling and the buddy system allows books that should never be traditionally published to be published, but I digress. The point is that these companies get boatloads of books to review from traditional publishing companies, so they are not going to reach out to you in an e-mail or phone call and tell you that you were chosen to be the singular Indie book they are going to review. Part of the reason they limit Indie books is because they were inundated with so many subpar books they couldn't afford all the people needed to screen them. This scam is implying that they have a staff not just scanning all the Indie books sent to them but also scanning every Indie book published!! I don't click on any scam e-mail, but my bet would be they charge you $600+ to get you that $400 review from BookBrowse or whichever company they supposedly represent--and that is only if they are trying to make an "honest" business of it, which brings up the question--why would they lie and tell you they represented these companies in the first place if they were honest?

(6) I can make you a better website/app/book trailer/turn your book into a feature film.

If you feel that your website is subpar or that you need any of these other things, then do research, find a reputable company with good ratings, and hire someone. If a person/company is relying on spamming authors to get business, they must be so bad at what they do they can't build good reviews online. 

(7) I am an Amazon Affiliate Marketer...

...and I want to share my commission with you. This should ring all sorts of warning bells, but the way it's worded, the person sending the e-mail makes it sound like s/he has to get permission from you to put a link on his/her website. This is completely false. Amazon Affiliates promote things sold on Amazon and then get paid per click. They do not need permission to promote any Amazon product. Since they can promote your book and get paid whether you agree or not, there is no reason for them to share their commission with you. Run--fast and far--from these. 

(8) May I ask you a question?

These are the most irritating people. I would like to believe these aren't really scammers, but the bottom line is that they are wasting my time. The biggest pet peeve is against people who want to ask me a question, but they expect me to respond just to find out what that question is. (It's right up there with "If you want to get scammed by me, simply reply with the word "DETAILS.") The best way to ask me a question is through blog comments on one of my blogs or through Goodreads--but asking me if you may ask a question is not going to get a response anywhere. Sometimes, however, I have gotten e-mailed actual questions, like "Is your book in hardcover?" I don't like answering questions through e-mail because only one person gets to see the answer. If I am going to answer a question like this, I will do it on my blog. The problem is that I am suspicious by nature. If you like me and like my books, you can clearly see on Amazon which ones are offered in hardcover and which ones aren't. There are many technical reasons why I don't offer all my books in hardcover versions. In the future, I suppose I could add this information to my website, and I might do just that, but that raises the third flag I had with this question: Which book? This question is really like the "May I ask you a question?" because anyone who has read one of my books or even looked at any of my online profiles would know I have written numerous books. To ask if a book (without naming the book) is offered in hardcover without naming it seems to be a fishing expedition to get me to reply and start a conversation, just as asking if they can ask a question is meant to start a conversation. I don't mind having a professional relationship with my readers, but should I ever become more popular, I wouldn't have that kind of time to dedicate to each one, so I'm not going to start now. Since this particular person did not specify which book and asked me a question readily available with minimal research, it raised flags. I feel most of these are actually scammers who are trying to develop a relationship with you first--similar to the my son is dying from cancer can you help me get food for him scams and the I am trying to settle an estate and want to make you the heir scams. 

Believe me, I would love for someone important to read my books--any of my books--and end up a New York Times bestseller the next day with a movie option just as much as the next Indie author. However, I know realistically that even if that happened, I wouldn't be contacted about it by anyone famous or any major publishing/promotion companies until after I was at the top (and then I would have to be even more leery of scammers). I also recognize that my books have niche appeal that does not necessarily appeal to the business models of traditional publishers. Once upon a time, I did query publishing companies about my books. I have a 3-ring binder devoted to rejection letters. I stopped, when I got one that said my book was a perfect fit and they loved it, but unfortunately, their schedule was full for the next 2 years and so they had to decline it. Some might have been encouraged by that and kept going. I chose self-publishing, which means instead of struggling to find a traditional publisher, I struggle to find readers. No matter what you choose, there isn't an easy path. Don't let scammers convince you that there is.

Noob Writing Mistakes

 I read a lot of Indie books. (Yes, I am kind of masochistic that way.) In general, people who don't have some sort of state or top-tier private college/university education in writing should hire someone who does to help polish their book. Yes, this is expensive, but it's actually a lot cheaper and easier than in the olden days when you had to hire a vanity press. Even people with upper level education in writing need editors to help polish, they just don't need as much polish. Beta readers are okay to use in addition to professional help, but they should be used more for finding out if your book is mostly coherent and enjoyable.

I repeatedly find the same mistakes over-and-over in new indie author work, so I figured I would address some of them here to help those who, for whatever reason, feel they can't afford the education or hiring someone. These are not all inclusive and can never take the place of a professional.

1. Not re-reading what you've written in one setting.  This one always blows my mind. This is something that is drilled into middle school age students as soon as they are taught to write: "Proofread" your work before you submit it to your teacher. Like many goofy teachers below the university level, they misuse the word "proofread," but that doesn't change the fact that only the most immature writers think they can put out a written work without giving it a second read through. 

Most of my novels are 50,000-75,000 words. If I am not working on the same book every day, I always go back and reread the whole story before adding to it. It is unbelievably easy to either write things that you, yourself, do not understand the meaning of because you misworded it or to forget what you have already said in the story. I mean, if you can't stand to read your own work, why would you push it on others?

2. Excessively and awkwardly using literary devices. If you have used the word "like" more than once every 1000 words (about 4- 8,5" x 11" double-spaced pages) and you are not writing some sort of simile induced poetry, you are not truly writing descriptively but rather overusing a literary device in your prose. Similes are the most basic and overused of all the literary devices. Unless you are writing literary fiction, literary devices should be used sparingly. 

3. Author's notes before the book. Many indie authors like to talk about themselves and their books. Author's notes at the end of a book, explaining what inspired the story and the connection you hope the reader will make to it, can add a nice personal connection for readers. Most of the author's notes that indie authors use, though, are placed at the beginning of the book and these authors use them to either explain the book almost to the point of apologizing for writing it. If you have to explain details about your book to your reader before s/he reads the book--there is a problem with your book. If you have to apologize for writing it, than either you are trying to target the wrong market (that will reject it) or maybe you shouldn't be publishing it at all? There is certainly art for art's sake, but artists, directors, and authors who make this kind of art could really care less if you like it or not. If you, the author, do not feel your book is justified without a lengthy explanation, it is probably one of those things that you can regulate to the back of your closet for your kids to ponder some day instead of releasing it to the general public. 

4  Mislabeling the Preface, Prologue, Introduction, or Foreword (including misspelling any of them). Although Author's Notes don't really belong in the beginning of a book, there are several ways you can introduce the book without making an apology for it. A "Preface" is kind of like an author's note. It covers what inspired the book and how it came into being and usually ends by thanking the people who helped with it. (Just thanking people would be an "acknowledgement.") Whereas an Author's Note would focus on making a connection with the reader, A Preface would give more insight into the process and focus on praising those who helped the author. A Prologue is part of the story, usually backstory that the reader must know for the rest of the story to make sense. This is not just random backstory that the author finds interesting. Authors should know all the details of their characters' backstories--the readers do not need to know all this information in a dump at the beginning of the book. An Introduction tells the reader information that is necessary for reading the book, but that is not part of the backstory. If you have created a unique world, where let's say gravity is reversed, this isn't really "backstory" information but it is necessary or the reader is going to be confused when s/he begins reading. A Foreword is where someone who is not the author (but who is famous) talks about how great the book is and how it affected them. As such, Forewords should never be found in Indie books unless you happen to be on good terms with your next-door-neighbor, who also happens to be someone like Stephen King or Johanna Lindsay, and you are so close that you don't feel like a heel asking him/her to (1) read your book and (2) write a foreword for it. If your neighbor is truly famous enough to write a foreword for your book and actually impress your readers, then s/he is probably not going to be able to tell you "yes" or "no" immediately, regardless as to how many times you have saved his/her cat from falling in his/her pool, because they will have to consult their publicist or manager or whomever is guiding them on their public image before they help you with your book. 

5. Excessive typos. There is absolutely no reason for this, even in an Indie book. A few typos--whatever. Excessive typos? MS Word and Google Docs have a spelling and grammar checker built in. Grammarly has a free spelling and grammar check that is a little more advanced. Not using at least one of these is just lazy. 

Doubting what these are telling you and making changes to the programming (i.e. marking something as correct when it says you are not) when you have never had formal training and just "think" you are right, is just dumb arrogance. Once you have told these programs you want to accept errors, it is difficult to go in and fix that.

6. Not understanding what a paragraph is. As a general rule, sentences do not make good paragraphs. In dialogue, there may be a back and forth of one-sentence paragraphs, but in prose, repeated single sentence paragraphs should not be used. Most of the time, these single sentences can easily be combined with other single-sentence paragraphs around them because they are still on the same topic. 

7. Writing in a foreign language. If you don't speak the language, don't write in it. I read several languages well enough that I am confident translating into English from them. I only translate into English because I am a native speaker and native speakers of target languages are best because we are pretty familiar with nuances and idioms. That said, I feel confident translating into French/Spanish/Latin/Italian for the brief instances they may be needed in a book. For German, I can go to my Mutti, who is, well, German. Most newbies tend to think they can use Google translate or AI and that's close enough. It isn't. there are some garbage translations I have seen--to the point I have no clue what the author is trying to say because they chose some convoluted way AI told him/her to say it.

Also important on this topic: If your reader isn't going to understand what is happening in the book without you putting translation notes in it-don't write in a foreign language. I defer to The Lord of the Rings for the best example of how to do this. Tolkien was obviously inventing several languages. He was a linguist so he could do that and do it correctly. There is a glossary you can use to translate everything because without it no one would be able to translate what was said (he was the only one who initially knew the language he had invented, after all). Real, modern languages don't need glossaries because they are easily looked up online. At the same time, readers could read Tolkien and never look up what the orcish or elvish or dwarvish was saying because they never missed out on the actual story by not knowing what those words meant in English. Now, I have seen even traditional publishers, or rather Amazon imprint publishers, add in a translation after using a foreign phrase. In this latter case, the translation was not necessary because the rest of the story allowed the reader to understand what was happening. Having the English translation pulls you out of the story more than having text like: 

"I love you, my sweet," Emilio whispered in German. 

Using a foreign language for authenticity when you don't really know what you are saying and when you feel you need to translate it immediately back to English in the text is poor authorship. 

8. Not understanding formatting conventions or using them inconsistently. Print books have indents at the beginning of paragraphs. Online and e-books have spaces between paragraphs. Some newbies combine these, which is confusing and wastes space. Other newbies fail to be consistent in formatting and italicize things randomly, switch fonts without seeming reason or consistency, and improperly use things like bold face and all caps. Publishing companies have style guides for those areas of grammar that are flexible in correctness but that need to be consistent throughout a manuscript. It might help if you establish basic rules and write/type them out in your own style guide document. Then go through your manuscript after editing to ensure you have followed these rules consistently. (This is called proofreading.) 

9. Not citing works or including quotes without permission. If you quote anything in a book--fiction or non-fiction--you must cite the source. There are some times in fiction where using a footnote is a better choice that directly citing the source in the text. However, directly quoting another source in fiction--especially from songs--is plagiarism unless you have written permission from the copyright owner of that quote, and you then explain that you obtained that permission in the copyright notice. In general, you can quote up to 500 verses from the Bible in your work, as long as they meet certain requirements and you cite which version of the Bible you are quoting as well as the book, chapter, and verse of the quote. As an indie author, it is generally best to just stay away from direct quotes. 

10. Not understanding your target audience. Every book has a target audience. Usually, the people who are your target audience are those who enjoy reading the genre you have written in. This means that if you write a mystery and call it sci-fi, when it doesn't have any sci-fi elements, then you are going to make your target audience unhappy. I have definitely seen mislabeled books--some are occasionally even put out by traditional publishers in an effort to sell books, like 50 Shades of Grey, that are erotica to a bigger audience. By marketing 50 Shades of Grey as a romance instead of as erotica, it reached more people than it would have, because fewer people read erotica than they read romance. This, is extremely risky because in doing this, you have to have a big enough marketing campaign to get millions of books into readers hands before bad reviews start flowing in. In other words, the book isn't that great but you already sunk a bunch of money into it, so you have to create a massive marketing campaign to recoup your money before people start letting other people know how bad it is. Movie producers also do this--giving you a trailer that has only the best parts of the movie and then you get there and the movie is awful. It's a gamble, but if you are going to lose money anyway and if you are a big publishing or production company, it is a gamble you may take. 

In general, indie authors do not have well-funded marketing budgets. Five bad reviews can be pretty difficult to overcome, and it is even more difficult to get a decent reimbursement for your work prior to those bad reviews going live. 

Aside from passing erotica off as romance, the other area where authors regularly misread their audience is marketing something as a "Christian" book. Many people are "Christians" and don't seem to realize that their behavior and the things they are alright with are not actually okay when one reads the Bible. Evangelical Christians, who see the Bible as literal, make up 1/4 of the population of the U.S. and they have and extremely strong review system online and through churches. If you slap the "Christian" label on your book, and it doesn't meet the standards of what a Christian book is, people (including myself) will complain, and they will do it loudly. 

Granted, in my case, I complain against all mislabeling. I recently read a "mystery" series that was actually a soap opera in book form. That's the quickest way to get a one-star review from me--don't understand who your audience is and market to one audience when your book belongs with another audience.

How Do I Get Reviews for My Self-Published Book?

 Another author on Goodreads asked me this question on my profile, but after asking immediately pushed her own book. If you include a link to your book anywhere it wasn't asked for (including in a comment here), it is spam and will probably be deleted. I struggled all day today with (a) responding to her question on my Goodreads profile and thereby not only encouraging her (and others) to spam because her book link would now be published on my profile or (b) report her to Goodreads as a spammer or (c) ignore her. None of these options appealed to me. 

First, I have not read her book, and I do not intend to read or review it. It's a self-help book, and that is one of the few genres in which I have no interest. You have to write a really good self-help book to get me interested in reading it--although it doesn't necessarily need to be targeted to me. 

Second, she called me "Jenna," which makes me think I wasn't the only author who got thus spammed. Note: If you are writing to anyone, especially book editors of traditional publishing companies, and you are using a form letter, make sure you change names, addresses, etc. No one wants to get a letter addressed to someone else. 

Third, I have no way of questioning her to try to find out if she was intentionally spamming me or not. I have reported other people for doing things like this, but usually only under pressure from fellow moderators (who want me to report people because they don't want to be spammed, too--and by reporting them, it will mark them as a spammer and reduce their ability to do this or they will get their account banned). 

Finally, I really don't like to ignore questions--especially legitimate ones, which is why I decided a blog post was the best way to deal with this.

So, the best way to get reviews is NOT to spam people--especially other authors. Sending me a link to your book is not going to get me to buy it. Even if I do buy your book, that doesn't mean I have to or will review it. Plus, if the person you spam gets upset over that tactic, they could leave you a bad review without buying your book.

I discussed Goodreads Giveaways as a method of getting reviews here. It is expensive and for about every 100 books I gave away, I got 2 reviews in return. Still, that is one way to get reviews.

You can also pay scammers to write (usually AI-generated) reviews for you that are vague. These are generally all positive because you are paying them and really have little value beyond tricking algorithms (at least temporarily). These are also usually expensive, and you are not dealing with good people. Most fly-by-night marketing scams also use these. If you are caught doing this, however, you may end up getting your publishing account banned from Amazon. 

You can do review exchanges--but by that I do not mean you give me your book for me to review and I give you mine. This is called a reciprocal review (you are reviewing someone who is reviewing you), and it is forbidden (and can get you banned) on most sites that allow reviews. A legitimate book exchange allows you to give your book to someone to review and in exchange you review someone else's book. There are a few groups like this on Goodreads. These do not usually cost anything (or sometimes cost the price of a book), but they require a time commitment to reading other books.

There are also numerous paid services that have started doing this--but only a few of these are reportedly reputable. You don't want to pay a service only to find out later they were doing potentially Amazon banning things like one person having the 50 accounts that review you and using AI to generate the reviews. 

There are online review exchange websites. These are a little more risky and also tend to be expensive. Some require you to use them with ARC (advanced reader copy) distribution before you publish your book fully (it should, however, be edited and polished fully). Some are set up so that you can give reviews for other books to earn your reviews, but all of them use a business model with varying costs if you want to get enough reviews for your book to be worth using the service. I watched a YouTube video where an author talked about how great one of these was. However, I noted that she spent hundreds of dollars and admitted she only got about 16 Amazon reviews. Goodreads reviews are great, but they don't usually translate into sales as well as Amazon reviews. I find it hard to justify that kind of money for the return. 

I have some other methods of getting reviews that I plan to explore over the next couple of years. I plan to write a second post about those methods and explain whether or not they worked. 

Avoiding Market Saturation with Books

 The problem with self-publishing is that anyone can do it. One problem is, of course, that books with little to no editing are published, which are irritating to read. Sadly, this is the least of the problems with self-publishing. Many self-published fiction books lack a beginning, middle, and end or other necessary parts of fiction. Non-fiction lacks proper sources and citations. Now, the above you can sometimes find in traditionally published books, as well. I have also, uniquely, discovered that the self-publishing industry is extremely dishonest because so called authors will publish awful "romance novels" that are 12 pages long and charge you $1 for them! 

Something else you won't usually find is market saturation.

What is market saturation? There is only a certain audience for any type of book. For example, just because you can put out fifty word search puzzle books a day doesn't mean there are enough people in the world to buy them. This is why puzzle books were usually created by specific presses dedicated to printing them and these presses only put out a limited number each month. They could put out ten books a month and make plenty of money where today a person could put out 50 books a day and might only sell ten books each month because the market is saturated. There is not a big enough audience for puzzle books to buy all the puzzle books that are being printed by indie publishers who have watched a couple YouTube videos on getting rich quick by publishing puzzle books. 

Obviously, there are a lot more than these "low content" books out there. Journals, coloring books, notebooks, planners. All of these are being pushed out because the latest "influencer" has said you can make a ton of money doing it. 

When the self-publishing craze first started, it was public domain books, like Pride and Prejudice. From the time Jane Austen first published her masterpiece until about 2005, there were about 100 editions of this book produced by various publishers. Now there are over 5000, which, of course means, thousands have flooded the market in the past few years. Amazon actually prohibits these at this point, but they are still getting produced by fooling the system. 

Once Amazon stopped people from reprinting public domain works en masse, people then switched to creating "commentaries," "analysis," or "reviews" of the books--again en masse. Market saturation does not make you a million dollars. Nor does attempting to enter a market that is completely saturated--especially if you are an unknown publisher. The only thing market saturation does is ensure people, who write good puzzle books or book commentaries will never make money off of them or even be discovered by readers who might enjoy their work. If anything, market saturation with quickly produced garbage only ensures that the market for those kinds of books will shrink even smaller. How many times is a reader going to purchase a book only to be disappointed with the content because it was generated by AI or only superficially written in a hurry before s/he decides to stop purchasing books?

Publishing companies with marketing departments understand this. If you publish one or two junk books each year, it won't destroy your audience. If you constantly turn out poor quality content, it will. This is why most of the major traditional companies have set up "imprints" to capitalize on the self-publishing craze while keeping a distance from themselves. I question if they will escape unscathed, though. 

I will tell you honestly that you may put little effort into jumping onto the latest self-publishing craze, but by the time you hear about it, it will already be a saturated market. If you want to make money self-publishing and have that income continue, it is hard work.

Off Topic Publishing More Scam Than Real Publishing Company

 So, I subscribe to Globe Soup's Contest Newsletter, which I plan to write about in the future. They send e-notices for contests not affiliated with them (albeit these are prefaced with warnings that they are not from them). Last month, I entered one from Tadpole (in addition to entering one from Globe Soup). I would deem Tadpole to be a legitimate publishing company--even though their material comes from publishing paid contest entries and the "longlist" winners seem to be high. The reason is because they are upfront about being an online literary magazine, and they have real prizes. Some of these are marketing packages, but you get a complete, free marketing package if you win one.

When I went to check out the Off Topic Publishing Contest, warning bells went off. First, there seems to be only one contest judge--the owner and founder of Off Topic Publishing. This, in itself, doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it is a flag. The only reason this would be legitimate, in my opinion, is if the small publishing company needed more submissions and was using the contest to do that. 

Then, however, I looked at the prizes. In reality, the first place prize is the only one that wins anything: a free manuscript critique/ and $100 CAD. That would be a decent prize, except a manuscript critique is not very valuable--you can get those for free from a beta reader. An edit would have been more valuable, as long as the editor knows his/her stuff. You also get free tickets to an online writing conference promoted and created by Off Topic Publishing. Writing conferences are, in general, scams. It is great to hear authors talking about their work, and this particular conference discusses copyright, which is important, but like all such conferences, the cost of attendance is high. Because this one is online, you could just go to YouTube and find a similar experience by piecing together your own conference. In person at major writing conferences, you might at least get some vendor freebies and contacts with publishing companies in exchange for the outrageous price. 

Sadly, and something that should always send up more warning bells, the rest of the prizes consisted of worthless "free" tickets to the conference and discounts on editing or critiques. Presumably, since you are paying for it, you get to choose which you prefer. Please note: A discount is NOT a prize. That is what car dealers send to everyone on the scratch off "prizes" they use to get you to come to their "sales event." 

At $20 CAD a pop to enter this contest, one has to wonder why the prizes are so chintzy. I have no clue how much she has offered to pay the four speakers at her conference, but at $120 CAD per ticket, presumably, she can have 20 full-paying attendees and still walk away in the black. Keep in mind that it is online, so she doesn't have to pay for space or anything else, other than potentially a Zoom meeting if she gets more than 90 people registered. At that point, she can certainly cover Zoom charges. As far as the contest goes, if she gets 5 entries, she has covered the first prize payout. In fact, if 125 people enter her contest, she has more than covered prize and conference fees. 

So, perhaps, she is just a smart businesswoman? (Even then I wouldn't recommend entering this contest--why pad someone else's pockets?) Then, I went to the "submissions" section of the website. Unfortunately, this is a short-story vanity press. You submit a short story/essay to their website, but you have to pay a rather large fee--$50 CAD, if you are accepted for publication in their anthology!!! Now, presumably 10+ authors will be included in this single book. For that $50, you get only 1 "free" copy of the book. I can publish and buy books a lot cheaper than that on Amazon-and Amazon allows you to have your own imprint if you want to buy ISBN numbers. Notably, ISBN numbers cost $30--but that isn't per book! I understand they are using IngramSpark, which is more expensive than Amazon but offers wider distribution, but IngramSpark does not require exclusivity. They could also offer books on Amazon and buy the copies they distribute to the authors for lower cost. Apparently, the founder is not a smart businesswoman.

I am okay with self-publishing authors starting their own publishing business, although I don't recommend it. (Yes, I know, I am trying to do just that.) However, I am not okay with self-publishing authors starting a vanity press. If you want to hire me as an editor, I am all for it and advertise my services on my website. At the same time, I do not have the capabilities at this point in time to accept and review manuscripts that I will then publish under the Dreaming Reality name. When I do that, if your manuscript is accepted, it would not cost you a thing to have me edit it other than a percent of the sales. This would be a big jump to go from only producing my own work to producing the work of others. I need to make sure all books I publish can be available across a wide spectrum of platforms--right now I am only set up on Amazon, although I am going to be expanding, hopefully by the end of this year onto other platforms (IngramSpark and Draft2Digital-formerly Smashwords) so I can get better library and institutional coverage. I would need to have more marketing strategies in place. I would need to also have the time to review submitted books--which for me would mean submission windows that would not be open all year. 

Most disappointing, is that since this contest requires you to submit the first 2,500 words of a novel, it makes it seem like you might get a publishing contract with them. However, when you look at their published book list on their website, there are only 10 different books and one calendar offered. Most of these are poetry anthologies edited by the founder, and two poetry books are written by the founder. Only one is a novella, which seems to be a collection of flash fiction--even though the contest seems to be looking for full-length novels. Although the contest does not limit genres, it seems like only poetry and flash fiction is all they have ever published. To me, there is no reason to offer a contest for full-length novels if you don't print them, except to get authors' hopes up that if they win they will get a traditional publishing contract. Instead, they will get connected to a vanity press that seems to have been started to boost the founders vanity. 

Big or small, a publishing company should put promoting their author's works and making money by selling them instead of promoting contests and making money by selling tickets to online writing conferences. In this case, it seemed like the "publishing company" also did little to promote the books they produced.

The Do's and Don'ts of Writing for Children

 I have one children's picture book that is currently published, but I have five children, so I feel like I am justified in talking about some basics when it comes for writing for children. I am going to use my book: Sal, Captain of the Baby Guards, and a middle reader book, Saving Bigfoot Valley, that just got a five-star review from me for examples.

1. Know your audience. Many people writing Indie books for children and think they all have to rhyme. This is false. In fact, unless you are a poet, you really shouldn't rhyme. Many books that I have reviewed in this past year that were rhyming children's books were written by people who used slant rhymes and neglected the meter. Sal, of course, doesn't rhyme. I actually have no desire to write a rhyming children's book. As you move into older age groups (i.e. 8+ is when beginning chapter books should start transitioning into a child's reading diet if not before), rhyming is not going to capture your audience. 

2. Unless your book has an upper and lower age limit, do not set it on Amazon. I get it. This feature can help you target your age group in Amazon searches. However, there is a big problem that I have occasionally fallen into: If you set a lower age limit, i.e. 14 years old, the upper limit is sometimes set to 18. 

So, if you click to Sal, you will see the age limit of 7-9. I probably should lower that to 3-9, but this works because adults are not going to pick up a picture book to read. Since the topic of the book is  a fear of vacuum cleaners, older kids aren't really going to be interested in it either. S.D. Brown's Saving Bigfoot Valley is targeting a specific age group: 9-12 year olds. Since this book talks about body changes during puberty, this is a good age group. One problem would happen if you wrote, say a book like Twilight, which would appeal to 14-year olds, but the top accidentally got set to 18 years. Twilight is a book that appeals to both children and young adults, so you have limited your audience. The other problem would be setting an adult book with adult subject matter to, say 13+, because it was written at a 4th-grade level. In this case, you are identifying your book as fit for children when the subject matter is not. Misidentifying your audience can lead to bad reviews. 

3. Including objectionable material in kids books. I list many things as "potentially offensive" in my reviews, including things like "parental disrespect" that some people might not find offensive at all. In this case, though it covers only the biggies: anything other than mild violence, rape (there a limited places where this could be used offscreen in a high school/YA book), any sex (again, offscreen is now okay in YA books, but this subject is touchy, so it's best not handled even in YA), religious topics unless it is a religious book, political topics unless it is a political book, LGBQT+ unless your book is an LGBQT+ book.

Anyone who has read the news, knows that several books are being banned from libraries and other places. Parents ultimately get to decide what their kids read, see, and hear. Inherent in the freedom of speech is the freedom to not listen to speech. If you include objectionable material in your book, you need to inform people about it instead of trying to sneak it under the radar just to sell books. Not telling your audience what they can expect leads to poor reviews and getting your book banned when parents allow their kids to check out a "children's book" only to find out it isn't. 

4. Does your theme make sense to the age group?

Just because you make a cartoon filled book, doesn't mean it is for children. If you make an adult cartoon book, you need to make sure that it is clear the audience is for adults. Animal Farm is a book about animals, but it also contains complex sociopolitical themes. It isn't really a book for 5-year olds. Think about what you want to say with your book and about the story you are telling. For younger children, complex explanations about nuclear physics is not appropriate. At the same time, books about everything from birthdays to potty training are in abundance. My son was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, which is why I wrote Sal. I couldn't find any books about that fear. For middle schoolers, the difficulties of going through puberty and books that show good examples of friendship are appropriate, but a book about potty training at this level or where a character gets married would not be. Young Adult books usually have characters who are on their own and out in the world--even if the character is only 16 and technically too young to have to face those things. Some books can appeal to more than one audience, but if you try to do that and fail, you risk getting bad reviews. 

Review: Saving Bigfoot Valley by S.D. Brown/Spike Brown

 In my reviewers group, this was a great find for upper elementary and middle school kids:

Potentially offensive items: mild violence, lying

This is the second book I’ve read by S.D. Brown, and I must admit, I was looking forward to it. I read Saving Bigfoot Valley with my fourth-grader before bed. She really got into it, was engaged and laughing, and afterward she wanted to discuss with me how she would have made better choices than some of those made by the main character, Arrth. In short, she enjoyed it immensely.

Bigfoot Valley is shielded by an advanced cloaking device. When Arrth, a “little” Bigfoot decides to save a rabbit from death at the hands of a hunter just outside the shield, he accidentally delivers one of the cloaking device repeaters into the skin-face’s hands causing the shield to destabilize. Wanting to make amends for his actions by finding and returning the device, he sneaks out of Bigfoot Valley and into the nearby skin-face town of Willow Creek (pop. 1743). Will he be able to do it before the remaining repeaters can no longer handle the load and shut down or will Bigfoot Valley have to be abandoned so the skin-faces don’t hunt all the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) to extinction?

Many coming-of-age books focus on falling in love, but that is only one aspect of growing up. Here, the focus is on body changes, awkward clumsiness, and taking responsibility for your actions. There are a few schoolgirl crushes, but the story never becomes a romance, making it appropriate for older elementary and middle schoolers. It did have some typos, but it was so cute and appealing that it was easy to skip over them.

You Can't Break Grammar Rules You Don't Know

The last two indie published books I read (by two different authors mind you) were the same. Not in plotting or characters but in the fact that they existed on single sentence and single sentence fragment paragraphs. As in, almost the entire book was written this way with the authors hitting "enter" instead of the space bar after each sentence. 

Most people don't know anything about grammar except "rules were made to be broken." If you fall in that group, it isn't something to brag about any more than you should brag you are among those who know how to swim just enough to get yourself (or someone else) drowned. Personally, if you haven't taken at least one writing course at a college ranked in the top 100 in the U.S. or top 500 internationally by U.S. News and World Report, you need cough up the money hire an editor (and an editor is always good even if you have met the above requirement). I know, I am being harsh, but an unedited book doesn't just harm its author, it harms all indie authors. It keeps them from being accepted into contests for the traditionally published and encourages editors at traditional publishing companies to toss submissions from unsolicited authors without reading them. 

However, I am fair, I will explain what a sentence is (in case you were flirting with the kid next to you instead of listening in your high school class), what a paragraph is, and when sentence fragments may be appropriate. 

A sentence must have a subject and a verb. She ran. When I homeschool my children, I don't accept sentences under eight words. As you can tell reading this post, I practice what I teach (for the most part--I don't generally go back and edit my blogging posts). Short sentences have their place: They increase tension; they are great for young, new readers; they can stylistically be used to flush out a specific character's nuances through dialogue, and if someone knows how to use them correctly, they can contribute to an experimental or poetic work. If you didn't get a full on B.A. in English from one of the abovementioned colleges, don't even think you can craft something in that last category, please. I hate to say "no," but the fact of the matter is that one in a million people can do something like that without any training and 500,000 in a million will think they are that one. 

An incomplete sentence or sentence fragment, can be short or long and can have both a subject and a verb, but it is dependent on more information to form a complete thought. Into the night, the butterfly flitting left and right, fully abandoning myself to the freedom. That was a fragment. I know you are probably thinking that is just a jumble of nonsense and could never be a sentence. Try adding "I followed" at the beginning: I followed, into the night, the butterfly flitting left and right, fully abandoning myself to the freedom.

Fragments can be tricky. Most indie authors I read get overexcited about putting them in everyone's dialogue because they believe that is how people really talk. For one character, that could work. In response to a question in a tense moment, that could work. However, speaking in fragments denotes a character of lower intelligence (or one who wants you to think s/he is dumb). If you actually listened to people, you would soon discover that most use complete sentences in their dialogue most of the time. 

Another rule I have for my children are that their paragraphs must always be at least five sentences, but I am much more flexible on this. First, variety in paragraph size is a good thing. It adds interest to what you are reading. Second, whenever a new character talks, it needs to be a new paragraph:

"Will you go home with me?"

"No!"

"Why not?

"The game isn't over!"

The above is a perfectly natural stream of one-sentence paragraphs. However, when that is the way you wrote your entire book without rhyme or reason, it is like going to a movie and finding out the only background music through the adventurous parts, through the romantic parts, and through the comedic parts, is the same pounding four bars of music over and over and over and over and over again. You also would not want to write an entire book of back and forth one-liner dialogue. 

In high school, we were given paragraphs and told to find the main idea and then list the supporting details. Read your paragraph, and see if any of the supporting details ended up in the next paragraph (or next five paragraphs if you have resorted to mistaking the space bar for the "enter" key). Or pay a good editor to fix it (i.e., not an editor who is like, "Oh, you are such a creative genius for not using standard paragraph and sentence structure.")