Are the magnets in stands and cases ruining your tablet?

Like most people, I love gadgets and when my OH bought me a Google Nexus tablet, I was chuffed to bits.

The Nexus is a great piece of kit for a writer. There's plenty of free apps that are great for writing like notebooks where you get to create your own unlined or lined notebooks with different covers and numbers of pages. That way you can work on multiple projects at once and gmail them to yourself or send to other apps.

Need to see a copy of the magazine you want to write a piece for? No problem, the Google Play store has lots of them. For the cost of the cover price you can have the publication uploaded to your tablet in minutes.

The Twitter app also allows you to send tweets from multiple accounts at once. Ideal when like me you've got a specific zombie account (hey, I love zombies and The Walking Dead) and a separate one for your writing and personal stuff.
Naturally I wanted to protect my new gadget from damage. So I shopped around for a stand.

That's when my problems started. The first one I bought, a black Carbon Fibre Print PropUp Stand Case Cover with integrated stand function and magnetic sleep sensors looked great.

 

 

Then I put my tablet in it. At first everything was okay. Then my cursor went haywire. I couldn't seem to copy and paste no matter what app I used. I thought my tablet was broken.

I shut it down. Took it away from the stand. Then I restarted it and the Nexus worked fine. It didn't take a genius to work out the stand was the problem and more to the point the magnet in the stand that activates the sleep function on the tablet.
I sent it back for a refund.

Then I bought the IPEVO PadPillow Lite Stand. It looked like an adjustable pillow. It wasn't until I received the pillow that I discovered the magnets. When I tried it with my tablet it was the same story. The cursor went crazy. My tablet was unusable. This time it took the tablet longer to recover. I actually thought it was broken forever.

 

I'm still on the look out for a stand or case, but from now on I'll avoid the ones with magnets. They nearly wrecked my tablet and they could damage yours.

Two week promotion for Hell To Pay on Kindle

Find out how the story ends -

For a limited time only, Hell To Pay is available on Kindle for

99p on Amazon.co.uk

$1.54 on Amazon.com

99cents on Amazon.ca

Grab the novella that's been labelled kick lit?

Writers, what to do when you get a bad review

The advice from other authors is to ignore reviews, but it's hard to ignore them especially when your publisher keeps going on about how reviews get you sales. When you get a really bad, withering review that makes you think you should never inflict your writing on the public ever again, you just want to dive under that duvet and never come out again.

But, is getting a stinker of a review really so bad? Well, yes it is, but here are some things to think about before you think of chucking this writing game in.

It helps if you write the answers down. That way your brain absorbs them and you can move on from the bad review, because you've got to move on so you can get on with writing.

Another great thing to do is answer these questions as though it's someone else's book that got the bad review; one you've read and know well. I use a similar technique in my bullying book, Bullying A Parent's Guide,  and to deal with my social phobias. 

Trust me, it works.

First off, look at the review -

1. Has the reviewer said anything constructive, that you can be used to improve the author's writing? For instance, a reviewer might spot a continuity error or that a writer over does speech tags. Or they might say that they couldn't see your characters, so you need to work harder on that. 

2. Do they talk about themselves in the review? Good reviewers don't talk about themselves, no; they talk about whatever they're reviewing. The over-use of I is a sign of an ego. The reviewer’s saying, "Look at me, look at me" and not here's a review.

3. Look at their other reviews. What kind of things do they say? Are they constructive in their criticism or venomous? Do they always seem to give good reviews to the top publishing houses, whilst slating self-published books or ones from smaller publishers?

I got a reviewer who admitted to not reading all of another book they reviewed because they "knew how it'd end." Why didn't he just read it then to see if he was right?

Another reviewer complained that a book with a bloody hand on the cover wasn't the erotic fiction they expected. Hey, I know what people do in their bedrooms is their business, but murder sex re-enactments? Now that is weird.

Does a good review come with a price tag?

4. Do they review for a site that charges for some books to feature on the site? I call these subsidy reviews. How likely are you to get a good review if you don't pay and are not with one of the big publishers who send them books and will probably stop sending them books if they start giving bad reviews? Mmm, we wonder.

5. Did the right person review the book?
There are books that have popular cross appeal, like books by Stephen King, but most books have a specific readership.

I wrote Hell To Pay as an escapist piece of fiction for women who were sick of seeing women being the victims of appalling crimes like rape and not getting justice. I gave the book the sub-title Die Hard for Girls.

A male reviewer on a well known book review website that charges some books up to £145 to be featured (I didn't pay them a penny because as well as paid for reviews they legitimise themselves by doing reviews for books like mines from commercial publishers) panned the book calling it "reverse misogyny" because my heroine Nancy got revenge on the men who raped her and murdered her parents. In fiction, clearly just like real life, women are allowed to be victims, but woe betide them if they fight back.

I disregarded his comment because the book's not aimed at men who think women should behave like they're in a Jane Austen novel. It's aimed at modern women who are just as likely to punch a mugger as hand over their handbag. I make no apologies for that. 

Other things to consider -

1. Look at all your reviews. What have other reviewers said - reviewers who aren't family or friends? If every reviewer hates your book, then you should start to worry.

2. Have you won any writing awards? Placed in any contests? Had good reviews on sites like youwriteon.com or authonomy?

If you have, how can your writing be as bad as that review makes you think it is?

3. Do you have a history of getting published? Relive your successes.
Now, that feels better.

4. Look at reviews top authors have got on Amazon. Are they all five star glowing reviews? I doubt it.

Look at all of the one star reviews for authors who get advances in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions. 

Stephen King has got one star reviews, so has Harlan Coben and Frederick Forsyth. In the case of Day of the Jackal, one reviewer said "Derivative and lightweight. Another wannabe Ian Fleming best forgotten." 

Now get writing. The worst thing you can do after a bad review is to dwell on it.

Watch the trailer for Hell To Pay...Glasgow's about to get meaner

Hell To Pay's official release date is Friday July 26th, 2013 when it will be available on paperback and on Kindle...




Disclaimer: The Die Hard for Girls books are pure, escapist fiction and do not in any way advocate violence.
 

It's time self-published authors were more honest

You'd need to have been on another planet not to notice the rise of the self-published or indie author. Their stories are everywhere and make selling books sound, well easy –

"I sold a thousands books a day using social media."
"Why I'm turning my back on a big money book deal to stay indie."
"I tweeted my way to hundreds of book sales a day."

Whilst all these stories inspire indie authors and those who are thinking of going indie (like me) they also make those of us who don't sell thousands of books a day (whether we're self-oublished or traditionally published), feel like garbage.

We use the social networks, we blog, we write promo pieces. And, we wrote good books. So, what's wrong with us or our books?

Probably nothing. So, why are other authors succeeding whilst we're not?

Part of the problem is that although I've no doubt these bestselling authors work extremely hard, they are not always completely upfront about the things they do to "sell" so many books or the fortune they spend.

Here are 3 things I've discovered -
1. Writers counting free books as sales. When something's given away, it's a freebie not a sale. If I see someone giving out free candy bars, I grab one. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna eat it, or in the case of free books, read it.

2. Authors are spending a fortune on publicists. One author I read about spent 40 thousand dollars on her publicist. Compared to what others spend, that's chump change.

3. Authors spending a ton of money on advertising, including fees to get on book blogs. I was sad to see that there seems to be a growth industry in prising money out of authors’ hands. This is often money they can’t afford.

What this post isn’t, is me having a go at indie writers who write great books that sell and work hard to get those sales. What this post is however, is a call for successful self-published authors to be more upfront about how much money and time they spend to make the Amazon bestseller list.

Sadly, I know of too many authors who have grown disillusioned because they’re not the next John Locke, the first self-published author to sell over one million eBooks on Amazon.com. As well as writing what I’m told are great books, he spent a bundle on advertising to sell books too.
 

The angry writer makes a comeback...and she's livid.

 

When you're not being published you look at writers who are and think their life must be wonderful. They've made it. Their book's out there being coveted and they're being told how wonderful they are. They're raking in the cash - go on, you in the know; chortle away at that one.

Then you become one of them and realise life can still be, well not to put it to politely, shit.

So far (I'm expecting more rotten tomatoes) here's the lowdown on my publication hell -

Amazon getting the listing wrong on ALL their sites, so all of my books wouldn't appear on my Amazon author page. I had to contact those sites individually - you can't just contact one, you've got to contact them all - to get the details changed. See What to do when Amazon gets your details wrong post. This was a time consuming process and all because whoever keyed in the details on a book site, couldn't copy information.
The book coming out a month early but the Kindle version not following suit. Result - losing would be sales and losing out on potential readers.

Getting one star ratings from people who complained that the book "didn't contain enough romance."
It's a crime thriller with a bloody handprint on the cover. There's no mention of romance.

Getting two one star ratings on Goodreads from someone who hadn't read the book. One rating was for the Kindle version that isn't even out yet. I contacted Goodreads and they didn't seem to think this was a big deal. It wouldn't surprise me if there's going to be an Amazon review scandal with people leaving malicious ratings and reviews.

My publisher saying my book came out at the wrong time "for the word to have got yet" and the book missed out in being in "some of the trade catalogues" where so many bookstores order their books, so there were hardly any orders.

A writer with the same publisher wanting to exchange likes on Facebook, then pulling out and sending me a sniffy message saying "I don't like your cover." A bloody handprint for a crime novel - why didn't I have a picture of a fluffy bunny? Eh, it's not a book like Living Cruelty Free.

To top it all, I've spent hundreds of hours promoting this book, doing things like setting up a website, a Facebook page, blogging, getting reviews and running a Twitter account, as well as putting excerpts up on Wattpad and Scribd and I'm starting to wonder what the hell is the point? The last time I wrote anything was this blog post. Yet, I've got a heap of writing projects that I could be doing rather than promoting a book I seem to be more invested in than my publisher and fixing Amazon screw ups.

Then today I got a call from my dad to tell me they'd seen a book with the exact same cover in Waterstones. I'm now off to scream into a bucket.

Would you like a starring role in a novel? Have a character named after you.

Some fanfare please –

Would you love to have a starring role in a novel?

Or have a character named after a person of your choice – your other half, or even your dog as a unique gift?

Well, your dreams can come true.

Everybody who writes a review for Hell To Pay on Amazon or Goodreads between now and July 26th when the book will be out in Kindle - available now on Amazon in paperback – will be entered into a draw to gets a character in my next book named after them or someone of their choosing (but no obscene, made up names please). The two winners - YES - TWO WINNERS - will also get a signed copy and get a mention in the acknowledgements.

Here’s the links people -

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

Happy reading and good luck:)

The book won’t be available on Kindle until July 26^th, so I will be repeating this competition then for the Kindle version.

Note – I’ve had to extend the original closing date because a few people have been in touch to say they’ll be in holiday or books take longer to be delivered where they are.