The Power of Categorization on Amazon

I published Elizabeth Chater's book, Emerald Love, on May 5 and by May 17 she had 0 sales. No sales for twelve days may not seem like a big deal, in fact it’s a reality for most of us; I've gone weeks without a sale of my sci book despite great reviews, but most of Elizabeth Chater's romance books sell at least a few copies in the first week. So what happened?

When I uploaded Emerald Love, I categorized it as Fiction - Historical.  

After a few days of no sales, I lowered the price from 4.99 to 3.99. I know that similar historical dramas in the 150-200,000 word range are priced at 7.99-4.99 and I would put Emerald Love up against any of them, so I felt the price was justified. But after no sales, I began to doubt it. The other books  priced at 2.99 were enjoying steady sales.

So I changed the price from 4.99 to 3.99.

A week went by. No sales.

I changed the cover.

No sales.

I brought the price down to .99cents!

No sales!

What the…?

I checked the document, making sure it was formatted correctly. No errors, looked good. Then I went to her amazon page. The search results said she only had 10 romances available, seven historical, three regency. Where was the eleventh?  

I had tagged the book: Romance, England, 1856, sepoy mutiny, etc. Why wasn't it listed as a romance?—because tagging doesn't put the book in Amazon's categorization system! So I went into the Bookshelf and discovered I had missed the "Romance" genre selection. I should have selected Fiction-Romance-historical. I made the change and re-uploaded it.

The next day there were two sales.

The moral of the story? Romance sells. And categorizing your book under romance on Amazon sells it. If there was any doubt the amazon categorization algorithms don't help, this should put that to bed. It proves that there's a big market for romance.  

My next book…hunky aliens from Venus…

Emerald Love

Omegasphere

Just got a great review for Omegasphere on the Book Instinct Blog. Check it out.

http://thebookinstinct.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/omegasphere-by-christopher-john-chater-3/

Review From Read 2 Review

Check out my review from Review To Review for The Traveler's Companion.




http://read2review.com/our-reviews/sci-fi/christopher-john-chater/the-travelers-companion/

To Preach or Not to Preach in Your Writing

I got a review for my book The Traveler's Companion that I thought was exceptional, despite the criticism. 


"This book was an excellent read. Don't let the three star rating take away from a great book. The author has written a smart, elegant, and enjoyable story. However, I found myself distracted by the preaching throughout the prose. The opinions of the author are obvious and overstated. (  )"

The question is, can an author inject his opinions about life in to a narrative? For me, the answer is yes. The reality is, there's no way not to do this. The opinions will always seep through, no matter how hard an author tires to suppress them. Often the content or story line reveals the opinions of the author. I know that, when I watch most entertainment generated out of Hollywood, that I am going to get a certain political point of view: an evil handgun is going to mysteriously get up by itself, shoot an adorable minority girl who has skin cancer because of global warming, and when she's taken to the hospital, she's turned away because she doesn't have health insurance. Is this a modern day tragedy or political bias? Both. Is it good art or bad? Neither. If you don't agree with the politics, it's bad, if you do, it's a fair reflection of urban life in our times. 

But shouldn't the author suppress his political or religious opinions? Hell no. Why should he? One should hope that an author's first priority is to the truth, but an author without an opinion is worse than being overtly preachy--its cowardess, and the prose will reflect it. The danger is that the author uses popular media bias to help sell a work or to pander to an audience, rather than try and prove a point with facts and interesting insights. An author should also hope he doesn't appear overtly preachy, like I was criticized for up in my review, but as I've stated, its better to have an opinion in a work than not have one. 

Was a movie about a premature ice age caused by modern pollution preachy, as in The Day After Tomorrow or in Soylent Green? Maybe. Were you entertained despite it. Probably. The political message behind the work had to be stated in order for the work to have any relevance. The writers endeavored to touch on subject matter important to modern viewers as a vehicle for a cool concept. Whether or not global warming is a reality is up for the viewer to decide. For me, I like to be presented with factual information, a realistic debate rather than media hype, but first and foremost I want to be entertained. It's entertaining to get insights into modern debates, if they're good insights. For instance, Schindler's List has a message: one man can make a difference, even when he's pitted against the most powerful army in history. Do you agree with this in every instance? Probably not. The other obvious theme of the movie is that racism and anti-antisemitism are destructive, cruel, and will ultimately fail as a social policy. Do we argue or blame Spielberg for his opinions? I don't. Avatar is about the spiritual connection between a race of beings and their environment: destroy the environment, destroy yourself. Corny or great art? It's the top grossing movie of all time, so be careful before you say corny. Titanic, another Cameron super success, is about man's arrogance with respect to nature. The Dark Night has Batman learning that extreme good is inexplicably tied to extreme evil. The writers could have left out their opinions or insights into life, but the work would have suffered. 

Hopefully an author will know when his opinions are hurting the work, but if a reader doesn't agree with your opinion, even a little will seem too much. I try to craft my themes into a work so that I have clearly stated my position, and, hopefully, in the most entertaining way possible. After that, its up to the reader to decide. 

I want to thank the reviewer for the honest appraisal of my work and, because the book is FREE for a limited time on Smashwords, I'd like to invite everyone to take a look and see for themselves if the reviewer was correct in this instance. I'd also like to hear from other authors about this subject. To preach or not to preach!

    

OMEGASPHERE A new novel by Christopher John Chater

Omegasphere is finally available on Smashwords! It should be up on Amazon in the next couple of days. This is a psychological thriller, but the core theme of the book is about where ideas come from.

I had a friend years ago who asked me where I got my ideas. It's an odd question to ask a writer, because the truth sounds sort of corny. The reality is we don't really know . . . yes, everything a writer does goes through the filter of his own personality and experience, but we don't know where the original idea comes from. God? The universe? The media? My guess is that it's probably all of the above. In the case of Omegasphere, I examine several possibilities through the characters Ursula and Kurt. Ursula is a memeticist, a scientifically minded cynic, and Kurt is a science fiction writer who is more open to mystical and paranormal concepts. Memetics is the study of how ideas spread in a culture, the brain child of controversial atheist Richard Dawkins, who began the study as a way to augment Darwin's theory of evolution using social  phenomena, such as how ideas are passed from mind to mind. To simplify the science, one person gets the idea to cook food, and then the idea is copied or mimicked by someone else. Soon the idea spreads throughout a culture or society, eventually reaching critical mass when everyone is cooking their food. The idea makes society as a whole healthier; people live longer and thus they have more time to pursue intellectual pursuits, which of course helps mankind to evolve.

Sometimes the ideas are copied incorrectly.They mutate while being past from host to host, and this creates a problem. The media makes its living this way, spreading half truths for political and or financial gain.Think of urban legends that exist for decades, even centuries, and influence social thinking without people even being aware of it! But there are great examples of ideas that make life better. Because someone came up with the idea for an ereader, one can now sit in relative comfort and read Omegasphere for only 2.99 on Smashwords :).  My hero wants to figure out where ideas come from originally. . . and when he's suddenly given remarkable extrasensory abilities, he's on his way to finding out.

Here's the description for the book:

Kurt Robbins always wondered where ideas came from. Then he found out. . . .

Kurt Robbins just finished his first novel and his editor loves it. The only problem is that six other writers submitted the same manuscript, word for word. Is Kurt a plagiarizer, or had something or someone seeded his mind with the idea? Memeticist Ursula Stevens is Kurt’s only hope in finding out the truth. While being chased by an unknown government agency, Kurt and Ursula search out the other authors, hoping to figure out who infected them, and why, day by day, Kurt’s intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds.

I'd like to dedicate this book release to my brother, Kerry. Get well soon, bro.

We've published a lot of books in the last month. Here's a recap.

 

Bait for the Tiger. A novelette, now .99c everywhere.

Infernal Triangle. Part of the Jamie Jarvis short story series. Bette Chater had a paranormal detective way before Psych came along. .99c everywhere.

Jamie Jarvis is on the case again. This time a car looks like it's crashed, but it hasn't hit anything. 99c everywhere.

Jamie infiltrates a monastic cult. FREE on Smashwords.

Operation Disaster is one of the science fiction stories Bette published in Fantastic Universe Magazine. Steve Vannevar has to travel back in time to stop a nuclear war. FREE on Smashwords. 

The Treasure of Mars. An alien wanders in from the desert and has great treasure to offer to save the children of its world. .99c everywhere.

Milady Hot-At-Hand.  Andrea disguises herself as a boy to investigate her sister and father's murder. 2.99 everywhere.

The Duke's Dilemma. In an attempt to save her younger brother, Lady Leslie fleas to London and into the arms of the Duke of Kenelm. 2.99 everywhere.

The Elsingham Portrait. Lonely librarian, Kathryn Hendrix, is taken back in time to occupy the life of Lady Elsingham.  2.99 everywhere.

The Runaway Debutante.  Matilda's father loses everything in a gambling debt, including her, but she courageously fleas for her freedom, becoming the personal chef and the delight of Major Bruce. As their love grows for each other, Matilda's past comes back to haunt her.  2.99 Everywhere.

The Marriage Mart. While Athena's grandmother tries everything to find her bookish granddaughter a husband, Athena makes an enemy of the most eligible bachelor in London. 2.99 everywhere.

Whoa . . .  that's a lot in just over a month, and there's still tons more to go. For now we're making sure all the books are exactly the way Bette would have wanted them, so please send me your thoughts or critiques on any of the books. Late this month my book Omegasphere should be ready to go (only a few months past deadline!), and plenty more Bette Chater books.  Enjoy!

I Met Greg Bear and You Didn’t

I went to Mysterious Galaxy bookstore to meet Greg Bear and hear him speak. He's currently on a book tour promoting the second edition of his Halo book series, Halo Primordium, which is based on the mega popular video game. 

 

During his talk, he was nice enough to introduce me to his fans as the grandson of his great friend, mentor, and colleague Elizabeth Chater. He also gave some history of their relationship that I found incredibly interesting. 

Back in the 1960's my grandmother went to work as an associate professor at SDSU, and a then 19 year-old Greg Bear took one of her courses and was immediately impressed with her teaching style, and by the fact that she was a published science fiction pulp writer. He went to her and suggested they start a course in science fiction writing. The obstacles were many. This would be the first such course taught at SDSU--in San Diego, in California! She was a woman in a professorial boys club. And the English department had an up-turned nose for any mention of science fiction. She and Mr. Bear went forward with it anyway and started a science fiction creative writing course, making 100 slots available. 200 people showed up. The class was enormously popular and continued to grow in popularity for nearly a decade. They even had Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, and Harry Harrison come to speak to their class. 

It's no accident that, because of the pioneering efforts of my grandmother and Greg Bear, the epicenter of science fiction in the world, Comic Con, is now held in San Diego. They, and a handful of others, blazed a trail for science fiction that has made it, according to Gregory Benford, the “Defining genre of the twentieth century.”

 

Pretty sweet. 

I was also impressed with how friendly Mr. Bear was— I'm going to call him Greg, since he and I are now BFF's—and how wise his council was to the some of the other writers and teachers in the crowd. His key to success: Don't give in to convention. Study the classics, learn from the masters, but don't succumb to current popular opinion or scientific flavors of the week. The parochial world of science can sometimes smother innovation. I think this is good advice, and, foolishly, I was almost surprised to hear it from him. I had expected him to say something more academic . . .  but now I see why he's a pioneer in the field and a bestseller.