The Readers’ Favorite annual book awards contest is one of the biggest ones out there, with close to 100 contest categories. It’d been so long since I entered (I tend to throw my hat in the ring at either the first possible second or the last) that I honestly forgot I was still in the running, until my publisher’s office wrote to tell me I’d won as a finalist in the humorous fiction category!
Thrilled to display yet another Community Klepto merit badge on its beautiful cover!
Oh hey, you came to find me but I’m not here because I’m over at the AUSTIN FUCKING CHRONICLE! I’m floored, over the moon, verklempt – all the emotions! – at this incredible review they did for Community Klepto; it’s almost as funny as the book itself.
Check it out here and see how awesome it is for yourself!
Leave a CommentHowdy! You came to find me but I am over with the kind folks at Lone Star Literary Life, where they have been kind enough to write up a great review of Community Klepto, which comes out in less than 3 weeks!
Leave a CommentOh, hi! You came to find me, but today I’m over at the Word Menagerie book blog where the lovely E.J. Hanagan has written a lovely review of Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook for all their readers.
Go check it out HERE, and support your book bloggers; they support you!
1 CommentSomething odd happened to me earlier this month. One of the developers I work with is creating a video game and wanted to know if I would be a good fit to help him with his game’s character dialogue. To assess this, I sent him a sample excerpt of my latest work in progress. He enjoyed it, and took it upon himself to buy a copy of Portrait of Woman in Ink, completely unsolicited. After finishing the book, he expressed his undying love (okay, moderate enjoyment) for it and asked me to sign on for his video game project. In return for this (apart from monetary compensation ‘n sitch) I asked if he’d be so kind as to post a review of my book that reflected his honest opinion of it.
Sometime after submitting his review, he got a form rejection email from Amazon saying that his review could not be posted. He appealed to the Amazon gods, asking why they chose to keep his review from the public, to which Amazon said, and I quote:
“We cannot post your Customer Review for “Portrait of Woman in Ink – A Tattoo Storybook” to the Amazon website because your account activity indicates that you know the author.
Customer Reviews are meant to give customers unbiased product feedback from fellow shoppers. Because our goal is to provide Customer Reviews that help customers make informed purchase decisions, any reviews that could be viewed as advertising, promotional, or misleading will not be posted.”
My book has a whole seven reviews from its nearly two years in the Amazon marketplace (I know, I know, I need to market more/better), and MOST of them are from people I know. In fact, most of them are from people I know far far better than a guy I’ve worked with for the past 6 months. This rejection leads me to form the following questions:
1) How does Amazon know who I know in personal life based on Amazon account activity? I never did any business with said person over Amazon, and like I said, I’ve only exchanged reciprocal me@mine.com emails with this person a small handful of times.
2) Does this mean that Amazon can infer that anyone I email from my personal email account is someone whose book review cannot be trusted? I email a lot of strangers, especially in my volunteer work with Velma Magazine. If they”re not snooping on my email, does this mean that any time I gift a book blogger a copy of my book in exchange for a feature on his or her blog as a Kindle gift (which is the preferred method nowadays), Amazon is going to reject that review based on the fact that “account activity indicates that you know the author”?
3) If someone who happens to know me in real life legitimately purchases my book and reads it, what difference does it make? Whether they enjoy it or hate it, the fact that they know me should have little to no bearing on their honest review of my work.
4) Why would a review by a individual with a personal connection to me in real life automatically be branded as “advertising, promotional, or misleading”? I have a hard time believing this person’s review contained any content that could be construed as such.
5) Why you gotta spy on me, Amazon? I publish on your platform and order lots of your retail goods and not-so-goods so as to take advantage of the two-day shipping I pay you for with my Amazon Prime membership. People have badmouthed you and I have always defended your awesomeness. WTF Amazon?
So for those of you know me as a close friend, Twitter follower, or anyone I’ve emailed ever, I regret to inform you that if you want to read my next book and give an honest review of it, I will have to sever all personal ties with you and go back to communicating through a middleman like the resistance did on New Caprica, since Amazon is going all Cylon ruler on me.
Anyone else want to weigh in on this? Am I overreacting or is Amazon being all big for its britches?
P.S. The Cylon above is an image from Amazon. So take that.
11 CommentsOh, hi! You came by to visit me but I’m over on All That’s Written where the lovely author and book blogger Lucy Pireel has done a great review of an advance copy of Portrait of Woman in Ink. Don’t worry, I’ll come back soon.
Check it out HERE, and check out Lucy’s works while you’re at it!
1 CommentI owe a pimple-circa-freshman-year-of-high-school-sized thank you to the the wonderful ladies over at A Reader’s Review for agreeing to feature Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook on their book review blog. This review particularly means a lot to me because this isn’t the kind of book they typically review on their site, but they found a spot in their literary hearts for a dose of different flavor.
View their beautiful review over HERE and share it with a friend or twelve.
4 CommentsMy newest book Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook got some review love from fellow author and book blogger Andrea Blackstone over at The Reader’s and Author’s Nook. While you’re over there checking out the wonderful review, take a look at all the great content they have over there and find the next book to add to your TBR list!
A huge thanks to book bloggers like these ladies who spread the word about lesser known books like mine. Check out the review here:
http://thereadersandauthorsnook.blogspot.com/2013/10/im-still-here-kelly-hitchcocks-portrait_20.html
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Last week, I did another one of those silly book giveaways with the KDP Select program to prepare for the impending release of Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. In total, I gave away 1048 copies of The Redheaded Stepchild around the globe.
Because I am a word nerd who totally geeks out over statistics, here are my geektastic findings from the latest giveaway:
-As you may have drawn from the sharp line on the graph (picture me with one of those presentation wands pointing to the chart HERE), giveaways are most successful on the first day. Why? Because people don’t like spending money, so they will grab up all the free books they can get their hands on, which in the Kindle universe, changes daily.
– In the free book rankings, The Redheaded Stepchild topped out at #14 in the Coming of Age category, and #18 in the Literary category.
– To my surprise, Friday was a good day to give away a book. Saturday was surprising, too. I figured people would be increasingly ignoring their computers the first 3 days of the giveaway (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and I would see a spike on Monday, but if you’ll refer to the chart HERE (picture me with magic wand again), my hypothesis proved to be wildly incorrect.
– I got a predictable 1-star review out of the giveaway. Am I surprised? Not really. Literary fiction’s not for everyone. The person who negatively reviewed my book would probably do the same to Jane Austen or Charles Dickens for lack of action. Not that I would dare compare myself to Austen or Dickens. I’m far younger and better looking.
Now, I just need to get ready for my next big promotional craziness – the release of PORTRAIT OF WOMAN IN INK!
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