I just made my first post on the Amazon Kindle forums–it was one for help in improving book descriptions. Now, I hate book descriptions. Most of them tell too much about the novel, often by covering stuff that doesn’t happen until half way into the book, spoiling things that shouldn’t be spoiled. Since I hate reading them, it’s very difficult to write them.
I recently read someone’s first chapter on critiquecircle.com and it didn’t make sense. Then I went back and read the book description in the author notes and the first chapter made more sense. But, shouldn’t that information be in the book itself? That’s what I think.
The reason for making the post is that I really need to do something about marketing, and the Amazon forums are one way. So is a Facebook author page. I picked up a book at the library on how to do that. The biggest problem I have is that any information is advertising and I don’t like being advertised too. But I do like finding good books to read.
So, here’s my current book description for ‘The Shortest Route.’
Building connections makes life meaningful, whether working a job in a corporation, or delivering groceries in Milwaukee.
Thirty-three-year-old Marty turns each stop on his route into a community event: a Sunday afternoon poker game, a Thursday coffee klatch, and weekly chats with a lonely old man. His ambitious boss thinks Marty lacks proper motivation. His accountant father and engineer brother treat his job choice as a joke, but Marty is playing a different game. When a recently divorced customer sets her sights on him, Marty loses confidence in his ability to make the right connections. Even his girlfriend begins to question if he is living up to his potential.
Can Marty find a route to success on his own terms?
As I add character descriptions to the huge cast of characters I have in ‘Sticky Note Empire’ — which is about a work team, so there are eight people to describe just with the team, I was looking for little actions that would make each character stand out, to help the reader remember who is who. And I was trying to get rid of the number of times I had someone shake their head, or relax their shoulders. So, I started thinking about how people stretch. Since one of the lesser important characters is a story-teller, with experience in improv, I thought about having him stretch like actors do.
Found a couple of great links about how to warm-up before performing. Now I just need to adapt a couple of those to my character, and hopefully his beats will help him stand out. I think I’ll have one of my main characters do a different type of stretch, since she’s tense anyway, that would be better than her just ‘relaxing her shoulders’ which sounds lame to me.
Speaking of stretching, it might be a good idea to do one now.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2060288_run-warmup-session-before-play.html
I posted to a forum on Amazon, trying to follow advice about marketing and see for myself what the forums are like. Rather than jump into the ones designed to promote Kindle editions, I started with one about the back of the book blurb, since I can always use help with those.
Two guys replied, one with detailed suggestions for rewording, the other agreeing with the first guy. Not a major rewrite, but at least one change that I’ll make immediately, others that I’ll think about. I posted a second blurb on a less-polished blurb. (One I hadn’t been over thirty times.) This time they disagreed, and got into a side discussion about an error in one of their books, based on the ‘look inside’ free download for Kindles. One of the reasons people post in the forums is that they can easily link to their Amazon books.
I’m always happy to get rid of errors, but evidently not everyone agrees. Everyone, it appears, is eager to give advice however.
I know I do that myself. Give advice. Sometimes when it’s asked for, often when it’s not.
Is that a bad thing?