Romantic Novelists' Association Conference 2015 - What Reviewers Want Panel

image from the RNA blog

A little while ago, I was kindly invited to join a panel of book industry folk at the Romantic Novelists' Association Conference for 2015 at Queen Mary University, London. I was delighted to be asked and though I knew I'd be anxious and nervous I also knew it would be a wonderful thing for me to try doing and I was so pleased to be given the opportunity that I seized the moment and accepted. The conference took place last week and I was getting ready to go along, sorting out what I needed etc the day before, same mixture of nerves and excitement. 

Come the evening before the day of the panel and I develop a really sore throat :( and the next morning it feels worse and I can sense a full on cold too. Sadly my plans to try and attend more of the day prior to the panel session that afternoon, and my hopes for staying to the dinner that evening, didn't seem manageable anymore, I was feeling worse, and probably only thanks to my husband aka my knight in shining armour whisking me to and from the venue for the panel event that I got there. Thankfully I did make it in time for the lovely main conference welcome by Eileen Ramsay and Jan Jones.

On to the panel itself, our session 'The Reviewers' Panel' was entitled 'What Reviewers Want - top reviewers discuss the growing importance of online reviews and give their tips for review success.' I thought the session was very interesting indeed, it was great to see so many people attending it and I really enjoyed both meeting the other panellists - Elaine Everest who runs the RNA Blog, Peter Crawshaw co-founder and director of the book website Lovereading.com, Anna James (chair of the discussion) the book news editor of The Bookseller magazine and editor of We Love This Book and books editor for Elle UK, Charlie Place reviewer from The Worm Hole blog - and hearing what they had to say as well as having the chance to speak myself. I think sometimes when you don't feel so well physically it can take your mind off your nerves a bit and I think I worried slightly less and concentrated even more on the discussion because of this; anyway, I felt braver than I thought I might have. There were some excellent questions and they prompted some interesting discussion, about how we each choose what to review, good ways to go about approaching reviewers (and not so good ways), building up relationships between authors and reviewers, how where books are reviewed and talked about has changed, the role of bloggers, Amazon reviews, Search Engine Optimisation and information gathering, and more, including how blog posts and helping support authors isn't just about reviews, but also features, book extracts, author interviews and so on. Thank you to Anna for leading the panel discussion and the audience questions so well, involving us all and keeping the session flowing.

I'm so glad I was still able to take part and I wish I had felt better, been able to stay longer and had the courage to speak to a couple more writers - there were a few people I thought I recognised from online photos but I didn't pluck up the courage to speak to anyone in the brief time I was there. It was lovely to see Sheryl Browne up in the audience and thank you for saying hi to me Sheryl, I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you properly. 

Thank you to Jan Jones for the kind welcome and for ushering me over to meet Anna and Charlie when I arrived, and a big thank you to Jenny Barden for the very kind words and for such an interesting panel. Thanks to Karen Aldous who had some kind words for all the bloggers out there (echoed by Sheryl) and who came and introduced herself to us at the end of the session. 

It was a brilliant event and I'm very glad to have been part of it and I hope I can be part of something similar again one day. From a (budding) writer's point of view the whole event  and indeed the RNA itself looks like it offers both a lot of inspiration and support plus a lot of fun.

PS As I write this the rubbish lurgy seems to finally be on its way out, yay. I really hope I didn't pass it on to anyone else. 

PPS A nice thing was that my dog had her first trip to London and went for her walkies near where myself and my other half used to both live before we knew each other, bit of romance for you :)

~~~~~

Links...

Romantic Novelists' Association 

Romantic Novelists' Association Blog

Lovereading

The Bookseller

The Worm Hole 

Links to some of my reviews of RNA members' books...

Mandy Baggot - Taking Charge

Jenny Barden - The Lost Duchess

Sheryl Browne - Somebody to Love

Christina Courtenay - Highland Storms 

Christina Courtenay - New England Rocks 

Nell Dixon - Renovation, Renovation, Renovation 

Louise Douglas - The Secrets Between Us  

Linn B Halton - The Quintessential Gemini 

Janice Horton - Reaching for the Stars 

Sophie King - Tales from the Heart

Kate Johnson - The UnTied Kingdom

Sue Moorcroft - Love and Freedom 

Evonne Wareham - Never Coming Home 

Nicky Wells - Sophie's Turn 

Carol Wyer - Mini Skirts and Laughter Lines

(Let me know if I've missed any and I'll happily add them!) Also see my Reviews A-Z page for more links to reviews and author interviews. 

Non-fiction Spotlight!

Welcome to a brand new, occasional series on the blog, entitled 'Non-fiction Spotlight', featuring non-fiction books that I have been reading. Although much of my reading time is spent in the company of novels, I do very much enjoy reading a variety of non-fiction books too and I have reviewed one or two in the past here on my blog. I thought that when I do review or want to highlight a non-fiction book in the future it could be part of a sporadic feature, hence this post. 

From time to time I read biography, history, travel, health, wildlife, and other non-fiction books. I'm not sure what this feature will incorporate yet, or how often it will appear, but I have a couple of books in mind to get it started: I've recently read Welcome to Biscuit Land by Jessica Thom, so that one will be featuring next, and I hope to read Death in the Baltic by Cathryn J. Prince and The Spy who Loved by Clare Mulley soon. I have lots of other non-fiction books I've bought sitting on my to read pile that I hope to look at going forwards and mention here too.  

I'd be interested to know how much non-fiction others who primarily read fiction get through, and whether you think about it differently in terms of whether you would ever feature it on your book blog. I hope you enjoy these occasional reviews.

Non-fiction reviews

Welcome to Biscuit Land by Jessica Thom

Apologies

Life has taken over a bit this past couple of weeks and due to this and also due to the fact that I haven't been able to get my mind into the right place to write book reviews, I'm conscious that there hasn't been a new post for a few days, so apologies for this. I hope to be back as soon as possible with some new posts! I am fine, I just have a few different things I need to concentrate on at the moment. 

All the best. I'll leave you for now with this beautiful path that we walked on last weekend when we had those couple of warm summer days, pondering where it might lead...

Mark Edwards - Author Guest Post - Relationship between writers and readers

I am delighted to welcome crime fiction author Mark Edwards to the blog today! 

Mark has written a guest post all about the relationship an author has with their readers - would love to know your thoughts about this.

I Want You to Shout it from the Highest Mountain Top…

a guest post by author Mark Edwards

Recently, this meme sprung up on the web and was shared and commented on by numerous writers.

Entitled ‘The Care and Feeding of an Author on Amazon’ it asks readers who have enjoyed a book to share it on social networks, write a review and like it on Amazon. The idea is that by doing this you help to keep authors whose work you have enjoyed ‘fed’ so they will and can write more books for you to enjoy.

This made me think about my own relationship with my readers and what we writers expect from the people who enjoy our books, and vice versa. Of course, ‘expect’ is a strong word. It’s more what we would like to happen. Or rather, seeing as we writers are a needy bunch who crave praise like vampires crave blood, it’s what we would love to happen.

Until recently, readers had little access to the writers whose books they read, and little opportunity to share their opinion of their books. Cast your minds back to the mid-nineties, before Amazon was founded, long before Facebook and Twitter existed. Back then, a book would be published, the writer might go on a tour of bookshops and festivals, and very keen fans might write letters using these antiquated tools called paper and pens. Apart from encounters at signings and the occasional receipt of a letter, the only feedback writers received was from professional critics and their mums.

Then, as now, the most powerful marketing tool was word of mouth. Back then, it was really was passed from mouth to ear. Most of the books I read in my teens had been recommended to me by friends or family, or because I’d read about them in a magazine or paper. You recommended a book to one person at a time rather than tweeting about it to your thousand followers.

When I walked into a bookshop to browse the shelves, I had to trust the blurbs on the back of books. I had no way of knowing what the masses thought about this book in the way I do now, when I can skim the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, or Google bloggers’ reviews. 

The internet changed everything for books and writers. Now, we writers are available 24 hours a day for readers to chat to. Most of us have websites, Facebook accounts, Twitter, Goodreads… We are easy to reach and communicate with. I personally respond to every reader who contacts me or tweets about one of my books, usually within hours or minutes.  On the Louise Voss and Mark Edwards Facebook page, I chat with readers every day. For me, it’s a hugely enjoyable part of being a writer.

Then there is that double-edged sword: the Amazon/Goodreads review. Now anyone can express their opinion – it’s like walking into that old-fashioned bookshop and finding thirty people standing by each book telling you what they thought about it. For writers, this is scary. When you notice that your review count has changed, you scroll nervously down the page, eyes half-averted, to see whether it’s a five-star winner or a one-star stinker, ecstasy or agony following.

Apart from the effect of all this on writers’ egos, and how much easier it is to contact authors, social media and reviews have a strong practical effect – and can make the difference between whether or not a book is a hit. There are so many books published every week, both traditionally and self-published, that getting noticed is a huge challenge. Most books vanish without trace, including many great books, because most readers don’t know they exist. It is not true that cream always rises. Yes, a book needs to be good – to connect with a lot of people – in order to break out, but the hard part is letting people know it exists.

This is why Sherry Snider, the creator of ‘The Care and Feeding of an Author…’, put together that graphic. Because she understands, as an author herself, how much we writers need our ‘fans’. If you don’t have a huge marketing budget, you are completely reliant on people spreading the word for you. So every good review, every tweet, every Facebook share, every face-to-face recommendation – they all make a difference.

In America, some writers have street teams – groups of fans who they ‘employ’ to spread the word about their books. They send the members of their teams free books, bookmarks, name characters after them in books, send them vouchers and so on, in return for favours, which could involve telling everyone they know about their books and asking their local bookshop to stock them.

Hugh Howey, author of Wool, has said that a large part of his success was being nice to his readers. He says writers should not concentrate on trying to get new readers but on nurturing those you have. This is a simple rule of business – your best customers are your existing ones, and it’s interesting to see a writer talking about his fans in such a way.

So what do you think? If you are on this blog, you must be a book reader. You must have favourite authors. Do you think that it’s fair for authors to expect so much? Do you resent being asked to share and help. Do you do it anyway? Or has this article made you think that you should do more to spread the word about authors you love? I’d love to hear what you think.

Many thanks to Mark for this very topical post. Please do share your views in the comments.

Mark Edwards’ most recent book is The Magpies, a psychological thriller about neighbours from hell, which is currently in the Amazon top twenty. If you have read it and liked it, please tell all your friends! Mark has also written three novels with fellow writer Louise Voss.

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Just starting out - book review blog

This is my first serious attempt at a blog so please bear with me whilst I learn the ins and outs of it!