Colleen wrote me and said, “I just got a terrible review on Amazon. I hate even going there to look at it. Tell me, what do you do with a bad review?”

It’s one of the things unpublished authors don’t realize… once you put something into print, it’s there forever. If you say something stupid, and you’re stuck with it. You can go to the person and apologize, but the words are still out there, waiting to be discovered by millions of other potential readers who will never get to hear your personal explanation or apology. 

Writing is a scary thing.

I’ve often done fairly blunt assessments of books and articles, and at times I’ve hurt people’s feelings. But I never set out to do that. I mean, it’s not like I saw the book, didn’t like the author, and decided to toast them just for fun. When I’ve said something was stupid or badly written, it was because I was trying to offer an honest evaluation of a project. But that’s not universally respected. Let’s face it — plenty of people ONLY want you to stay something nice, or to say nothing at all. 

So if you’re asked to review a book that’s awful, what are you supposed to do? Lie about it? It seems to me like the best thing to do is to be honest but as gracious as possible, speaking the truth (or at least the truth as you see it) in love. It’s those sorts of jobs that can get you into trouble.

Unfortunately, a bad review like that can hurt an author’s career (to say nothing of the author’s feelings). So I find that when I’m simply asked to review a book for a friend, I tend to simply stay away from reviewing a book I didn’t love. That means the title will get a falsely-positive set of reviews, but  I don’t have to deal with any fall-out. Maybe that’s why so many of us tend to discount what we read on Amazon — we’ve seen too many reviews from mothers and friends to accept the glowing evaluations as honest. On the other hand, if a magazine or website hires me to do a review, I have to be as honest as possible, even if that means sounding critical. 

A while back I did an interview with an online magazine. It was just a Q-and-A thing, and it was fun. I was maybe a little acerbic at times, but the whole tenor of the thing was to give good info to people in an entertaining way. As a response, one writer who didn’t like my answers decided to create her own “Chip MacGregor Is A Heretic” website. (I’m not making this up. She was particularly concerned because I poked fun at “conservative Christian home-school moms in blue denim jumpers and their hair in a bun.” Which, you’ve got to admit, is a fairly decent description. I had to laugh at the two women who wrote in to defend blue denim jumpers.) Anyway, she got a bit personal, and when one person wrote in to say to her, “you know, you sound a little upset about all this,” the creator of the site went to great lengths to explain that she’s not mad, she’s standing up for truth, justice, the American way, blah blah blah. 

Uh-huh.

What she failed to mention was that I’d toasted her a couple times on an ezine for saying really stupid things. So this was her way of getting back. Except it doesn’t work that way. You rarely win anything by attacking someone. And you NEVER win anything by attacking back. A couple of times I’ve worked with authors who wanted to write in a defense or a clarification after experiencing a bad review. But offering an explanation for a bad review never works. My advice? Forget it. Put the bad review in a box, set it behind you, and move on. We all get bad reviews, we all get some personal attacks, we’re all going to face readers or reviewers who sometimes JUST DON’T LIKE US. That’s life. 

That’s especially true with books, where beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You might write something you think is deep and thoughtful — but a reader might find it silly and turgid. Guess what? That’s the life of the writer. If you can’t live with it, pick a different career. NOBODY is universally beloved in this business. (There were people who hated Mark Twain. There are people who buy the silly horror-porn written by Jon Konrath and think it’s enjoyable. Different strokes for different folks.) 

Look, when someone attacked me, I should have brushed it off. When I responded negatively to her, SHE should have brushed it off. The fact is, none of us can read the minds of others. I don’t really know what she was thinking — maybe I really AM a heretic. Maybe she really doesn’t like me (hard to believe, since I’m so flipping wonderful, but it’s happened to me before). Or maybe, just maybe, hers was an honest response, and I should just shut up about it. There’s something to be said for keeping your mouth shut and not whining. 

Kurt Vonnegut once talked about the unfairness of personal attacks in bad reviews, claiming rage and loathing for a novel is “preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.” When you get a bad review, recognize the attack for what it is (small-mindedness, misunderstanding, a chance for the attacker to make herself feel better, or, perhaps most commonly, an honest response to something not suited to the reviewer’s tastes). Then forget about it. Go read a positive review to make up for it, forget the bad one, and move on to something else.  

Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

Using Facebook to promote yourself as an author seems like a no-brainer. After all, everyone’s doing it. You should too. Right? Well…

I think I speak for all of us when I say that I roll my eyes, groan loudly and hit “delete” when faced with “like” requests from pages like Kaufmann Realty or Investors’ Insurance or … and I’m not making this one up … the Cardinal Fitness Cardinal. It’s not that I don’t like those companies. It’s just that they haven’t answered the million dollar question…

What’s in it for me?

While Facebook is highly commercialized, it’s still a very personal experience. It’s a representation of who you are. And while you may not know every person on your friends list, you certainly want to give them the chance to know you. So, you dig around for only the best timeline cover photo. You painstakingly rearrange your activity so that only the most impressive things show up. You carefully select music, movies and hobbies that reflect who you are.

And as for “likes?” You only “like” things that reflect your personality. Your style.

UNLESS! Unless they offer something in return that is simply irresistible.

Cardy the Cardinal had nothing to offer.  No coupons for free spin cycle classes. No updates on “dead times” at the gym. I couldn’t even find updated information on local running events or gym hours. There was nothing in it for me. And since I had no connection with Cardy the Cardinal other than the fact that I was a member of his gym, I deleted the request.

This, my friends, is an example of the main pitfall of using Facebook to promote yourself as an author. You assume that since you’re among family and friends, they’ll all want to be part of your writing experience. But who wants to “like” a page only to be updated every time the author writes 1k in 1 hour? Who wants to hear about rejections and NaNoWriMo and “OMG I just figured out why my protag is the way she is!!!”

The answer is other writers. Other writers want to hear about this stuff. They want to talk about it and analyze it and gush over it again and again. But fans? Fans don’t care.

The greatest issue that I see with authors using Facebook to promote themselves, is that they focus it in a way so that it targets other writers. When it should be targeting readers.

Other writers don’t buy your books. They don’t come to your events and sit and listen at your readings. Why? Because they’re busy with their own books. Their own events. And that little thing called jealousy can sometimes get in the way.

But readers? Readers will support you, love you, and tout your books. Readers are the ones we should target with our Facebook groups and pages. And to do that successfully, we need to provide a takeaway that is irresistible.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to go over exactly how to do just that. It’s not an easy task for unpublished authors, and might not be the best way to go about building a platform. But we’ll still give tips and ideas. And for all of you published authors looking to make an impact with Facebook, stay tuned. There’s going to be plenty of info for you in the coming weeks.

I want to your questions! We’re nearing the end of this great discussion on platform, but it doesn’t have to stop. Post your platform-related questions or email them to me at amanda (at) macgregorliterary (dot) com. I’d like to do a few weeks’ worth of Q&As before I bring in some guests to post on how they conquered the Platform Monster.

Brant wrote and asked a question that I figure goes through every writer’s mind at one point or another, so it’s probably worth giving it some thought. It’s not rocket science—but because it’s not rocket science, it can be easy to overlook. He asked, “I’m trying to decide if I should move from part time writer to full time writing — what advice would you have for someone who just needs to make major career decisions as a writer?” 

1. Go slow. The decisions I’ve raced into have a tendency to be the ones I’ve regretted. There is rarely a time a writer MUST make a decision today, rather than thinking about it and sleeping on it for a night. 

2. Listen. I’ve found my gut will tell me if I’m right. I hate to be so vague, but I always found that to be true—when it didn’t feel right, it probably wasn’t. So learn to stop and listen — to trusted friends, to people in the industry, to that voice in your head. 

3. If my gut fails me, my SPOUSE will tell me if I’m right. While I hate to admit this, my wife is probably right more often than I am. (But don’t tell her I said this.)

4. If I’m doing something solely for the money, I’m probably making a mistake. The worst situations I got into as a freelance writer were the ones where I didn’t want the job, or didn’t understand the job, but needed the money. (“A book detailing your…what? Your history? And your business decisions? And your thoughts on life? And include a rant against the US parrot-importation laws? Sure, I can do that.”) 

5. Everybody needs a calendar and a to-do list. Trust me—it makes saying “no” much easier if you can say, “I’m busy that day.” Even if all you’re busy with is taking your daughter to the school play. And having a to-do list allows me to prioritize and get to the really important things in my work life. 

6. Be prepared to face tough choices. I used to find that my life swung back and forth between “CRAZY BUSY” and “looking for something to do because I was taking this stupid break.” Somewhere along the line, I balanced those out a bit more because I made some decisions about what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do. If you haven’t made those decisions, you’ll find your life and schedule are considerably more complicated. 

7. Stay in shape. It may seem completely unrelated (or even cliché), but I’ve noticed I make better decisions about moving forward or putting on the brakes when I’m exercising regularly, eating right, and feeling good. Sorry to sound like your mother.  

8. Keep connected to other people. I make better decisions when I talk things over with people I respect, whose wisdom I can listen to. 

9. Take a break every now and then. Even God rested. You’re not him. Take a hint. 

10. I still screw these up sometimes, so don’t take this post as “Chip has it all together.” Hey, last time I checked we were all screw-ups. So don’t beat yourself up if you’re in a bad place right now. Instead, sit down with a piece of paper. Don’t try and tackle all your issues at once—list them. Figure out how you can tackle them one by one. Put together a new calendar. Determine a weak, crummy purpose statement that at least gives you a head start. And make a commitment to be in a better spot by… May 1. (NOT “everything will be perfect,” but “I will have made progress on my planning.”)

More on career planning coming — what helps YOU when you face big decisions? 

StoneHouse University is offering a webinar on “maximizing your book and Kindle sales on Amazon,” and it’s led by Thom Kephart, the Amazon Community Outreach Manager.  A lot of authors are posting ebooks and looking to boost sales, so here’s a chance to get good info straight from the source. You’ll hear about Amazon’s publishing programs, their tools, and you’ll have opportunities to ask questions of one of their top people talking about Author Central, KDP Select, Amazon Advantage, Createspace, Look Inside the Book, and the other tools Amazon offers authors.

Just thought you’d like to know. The webinar is this Tuesday, April 24, from 10 to Noon, Mountain Time. And the cost is $79. To register go to: http://stonehouse.enterthemeeting.com/m/RC1S9JN9

Okay, after months of having people tell us that we need to update the blog, we’ve finally made the change to WordPress. All the old posts have transferred over (though not all the comments have yet), and we’re going to have a whole new look soon. Thanks for reading — Writers Digest again named us one of the top 101 writing sites on the web!

Okay, I’m back from my vacation (a bit of free wisdom: Given the chance, move to Kauai), and I realize I need to catch up on a BUNCH of questions from people. This one seemed appropriate — Denise wrote to say: “I used to work as a waitress. After my shift, I would go home, cozy up to my laptop, and write. Writing became a sanctuary, and I filled pages effortlessly. Now I work at a busy office job, so I spend the better part of my day staring at a computer screen and contracting carpal tunnel. I come home from looking at other people’s writing all day, and I don’t have any energy left to spend on my own writing. You’ve just had a vacation, so you know what it’s like to have free time to do what you want. What advice would you give a writer who seems to spend everything on other people’s projects?”

You know, I went through that same thing, Denise, and had to ask some writing buddies what to do. They gave me advice that I hated…but it worked. The suggestion? Get up early. Spend two hours on your OWN work before heading to the office to work on somebody ELSE’s stuff. That way you’re mentally charged when you do your own writing.

So I did. And trust me, it was hard. I’m not a morning person. But I got up early, before my kids were awake, and wrote for two hours every day. EVERY day. Then I’d leave for my office. I hated it, and wanted to take the first hour to make coffee, look at headlines, whine to friends in emails… but eventually I started writing. And with the combination of no interruptions and a clear mind, I finished my book in about four months. No kidding. Two hours of focused writing time to try and finish a thousand words per day. That was a pattern I established early in my writing career, and stuck with it because it worked. Try it. Sure, there’s a sacrifice to getting up at 5 each morning, but you’ll quickly make the adjustment (i.e., “go to bed earlier”), and it will pay off in a very short time. I’m living proof. That book I finished? It was my first book contract, after having done hundreds of articles but never having been able to get over the “book proposal” hump. 

There’s not many things that I can say actually changed my life, but “getting up early to write my own stuff every day” is one of the few.  

Speaking of making adjustments, I gave up sports for Lent. No kidding. I figured I didn’t need one more stupid NCAA tournament game, one more bit of NFL draft news, or more more bit of spring training. So I cut it all out. And… I hated it. I have to admit, I really enjoy my sports. But I gave it up. I noticed I spent a lot more time reading books just for enjoyment. And I dithered around less on the web. And yes, it’s improved my spiritual life (which is really the point of Lent after all). Just thought I’d offer that to writers who are wondering why they never find time to read great books any more.

Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

Amazon’s KDP Select program (part of their Kindle Direct Publishing platform) comes with a lot of strings. First, the author must agree not to have their book published elsewhere for a period of 90 days. Second, they must agree to have their book be part of the Lending Library Program. And third, they have to be ok with the fact that there’s no set structure for payment of titles lent out through the Lending Library. You basically just get a portion of the money pool based on how many books you lent in comparison to the total number of books lent (quite a mouthful).

In exchange for all of this, you get 5 days to offer your book for free on Amazon.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. But only if you’re smart about it.

Amazon is designed in such a way that the more an item sells, the more air time it gets. And the more air time it gets, the more it sells. This happens through their recommendation program (that list of Amazon Recommendations that appears at the bottom of a product page) and their “Customers who bought this also bought…” program. When your book hits these promotional venues, it can find fans who never knew you or it even existed. And if priced right, shoppers will throw your book in their cart, assuming that since they like Joe Schmoe, they’ll like you.

So what does this have to do with KDP Select? Everything. KDP Select is the quickest way to get your book air time. When it gets air time, it will start selling. And when it starts selling as few as 300 or 400 copies a month, Amazon starts recognizing it and lists it as a recommended product and such.

But how do you ensure your book gets air time through KDP Select? Well, you need to make it on to the Kindle Top 100 FREE Best Seller list. Preferably, near the top.

HOW TO HIT THE KINDLE BEST SELLER LIST

1. Make sure it’s the right genre. Mysteries, romances…straight category fiction does really well in the ebook format, because let’s face it: most ebook readers are people who are traveling or people who read purely for entertainment. Not because they’re looking to change the world or themselves or become better people.

2. Give your book a great cover. Keep in mind that the Kindle store keeps covers very small. Almost thumbnail size. So make sure the title stands out by making it large and dark. Images don’t have to be as visible…they just have to be alluring enough to get someone to click on the cover and see a larger size. And whatever you do, don’t skimp on quality. This is one of the few of the costly aspects of the ebook process that is essential to success. So pay a professional or find a college student and pay him. Do what it takes to get a great, professional-looking cover.

3. Give your book a great description, complete with reviews. Don’t punk out and slap up your book’s back cover copy in the description section. Think of this more as your only chance to sell the book to a customers. So really work the copy, including reviews, links and whatever it takes to prove it’s a great read. This is also a great opportunity to link to other books in the series or other books that you’ve written. I guarantee you’ll see those sales go up, too.

4. Use up all of the FREE days at once. It’s tempting to spread your days out over time, but what I’ve found is that you get much more out of your days if you use them at once. This is because you give your book more time to build interest and reach people. You also give it more time to climb the best seller list. I’d say the best days for doing a promotion are probably Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. But you can play with it and find what works for your readers.

5. Have a marketing campaign in place. Just like we discussed last week, a steady marketing campaign complete with guest blog posts, blog tours, ReTweets and more gets people to pay attention to your book. I’ve also found that updating those you know on its status (example: We’re now #7 on the best seller list! Tell your friends so we can hit #6!) helps mobilize people toward action.

6. Make sure the price is right for when the FREE days are over. The last thing you want is for momentum to die. So, make sure your book is reasonably priced for when it FREE days are over. $4.99 and less works best, though I’d probably keep it under $2.99. A lower price will keep people buying it, therefore perpetuating how long it sits in the spotlight.

These are tried and true, folks, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more good strategies out there. I’d love to hear your thoughts and also any questions you may have on the process!

While Chip is vacationing in Hawaii, look for posts from the rest of the MacGregor Literary staff. Not surprisingly, “Favorite Books” is the topic of choice for our crowd of book lovers. Don’t be afraid to chime in with your thoughts on these top picks.  

Erin Buterbaugh is our newest agent; her areas of interest include children’s, middle-grade, and YA fiction, as well as women’s fiction, suspense, and non-fiction.

Okay, first of all, I want everyone to appreciate the fact that I’m writing this blog entry at 12:49 a.m. the day it’s supposed to be posted, not because I put it off all week, but because that’s how crippling I found the task of picking my “favorite” book to blog on. Seriously. I’m one of those people who stand, helpless, for hours in the deodorant aisle, eyes glazed over, unable to cope with the four dozen choices before her, so you can imagine my complete apoplexy when attempting to pick out one favorite book from my overstuffed bookshelves. Suffice it to say, there was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Since I have more to do in the next three months than to create a system by which I compare every book I’ve ever read and definitively pick the favorite, I decided instead to narrow it down to my favorite book within a category, which I realize is a total cop-out, but one that I’ll hopefully get away with because I’m the new kid and everyone’s still being really nice to me. In honor of last Friday being Friday the 13^th, I decided to go with my favorite ghost story. One of Poe’s, you ask? Nope. Well, then, perhaps Washington Irving’s THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW? Wrong again! My favorite ghost story comes from that well-known master of the supernatural thriller, Charles Dickens, and is entitled A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

(If you think I’m cheating further by trying to pass off a Christmas book as a ghost story, I appeal to the original preface to the work, from the pen of Mr. Dickens himself: “I have endeavored in this ghostly little book, to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly…” Ha! It’s a ghost story.

I’ve kept a yearly Christmas Eve date with A CHRISTMAS CAROL since I was in high school, and though Barbie, VeggieTales, the Muppets (my favorite), Looney Tunes, and countless made-for-tv movies have done and re-done the Scrooge storyline nearly to death, the book somehow never seems the least bit threadbare or faded when I revisit it. Dickens’ prose is sparkling, comical, overflowing with characterization that never makes it into the movie versions. (My personal favorite is the account of the water-plug in the freezing London streets on Christmas Eve, which, the men laboring on it having left it to gather around a fire: “…being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice.” Yes, this is a fire-hydrant the man is writing about with such color and animation.)

In the shops on Christmas Eve, description that might seem excessive in the average book (when’s the last time you savored a three-page description of a grocery store?) flaunts its extravagance, tantalizing the reader with the bounty and luxury of words as unnecessary but as delightful as the seasonal treats in the grocers’ windows. “…there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk biffins, squat and swarthy,  setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.” I can’t read that without craving a Norfolk biffin, and I don’t have the slightest idea what a Norfolk biffin is.

Now, I admit that A CHRISTMAS CAROL doesn’t fall into the normal family of “ghost stories” in that that its four main ghosts—Marley, Past, Present, and Future—aren’t supposed to be particularly frightening, but there are several darker phantasms in the book that are absent from most (though not all) stage and film treatments. Consider the children found clinging to the second ghost’s robes at the end of his time with Scrooge, children whom a “stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled…into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing.” Yeesh. The children, Want and Ignorance, show in stark relief to the revelry and plenty which otherwise characterize the second spirit’s visit, and their appearance and contrast to the preceding part of the chapter chills me quite as much as it does Scrooge.

The moral of most Christmas-themed stories and movies, at least, those purporting to have a “moral,” seems to be that the trappings of Christmas aren’t important, that the real focus of the holiday should be on Jesus (or family, or the warm fuzzy feeling we get from Santa Claus—the “morals” of these Christmas stories have gotten more wishy-washy over the years). And while I agree that the real focus of the holiday should be Jesus, the argument A CHRISTMAS CAROL makes is that the trappings of Christmas—food, parties, gifts, games—are important, that compassion and hospitality are graces granted to us exclusively during our time on earth, and which we should revel in being able to employ during our short pilgrimage here.

One of my favorite passages, describing Scrooge, post-visitations: “Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”

And now it’s about time for the second ghost to appear (on the stroke of two, if you remember), and I’m typing with one eye shut, but quite as well to have bags under my eyes tomorrow because I stayed up late rhapsodizing about one of my favorite books as to have the malady in less attractive forms. Merry Christmas!