How to Lose a Reader in 10 Pages or Less: Failure to Engage

An author is most likely to lose a reader inbetween releases.  This isn't because the reader didn't like your story and wants to boycott all your future books.  It’s because there are a million other authors out there clamoring for a reader’s attention and they may get distracted by all the shiny goodness presented to them.  So how do you keep your reader focused on your shiny goodness when you don’t have a new book to for them to dive into?  The solution may sound simple, but it is a concept that seems to be fading away – engaging with your readers.

Many authors have lost the ability to engage with their readers outside the business transaction of buying and selling their books.  Authors are a reader’s celebrity.  You are our movie stars and rock gods and goddesses.  As a celebrity, it’s important to keep your fans happy and show new potential fans that you are approachable – just the average Joe that happens to sell millions of books and gets to live the life we all dream about.  There are some pretty basic concepts that will help your fans keep in touch with you inbetween books.

• Have a website.  Sounds pretty simple, right?  Wrong!  You can’t just throw a webpage up and add your new releases to it and expect people to keep coming back.  You need to do one of two things.  Add a blog.  A blog that you update fairly regularly.  Something new to catch the reader’s eye at least a couple times a month.  If you don’t have a blog, then update your announcement section at the top of your webpage.  You don’t need to get too personal (unless you want to).  Let readers know what awesome new book you just finished or what section of your current work in progress you are on.  Heck, tell them it snowed today and how much you love eating roasted marshmallows in the winter.  Going to a convention?  Talk about it.  It will help let readers know where to find you and the convention will love the publicity.

• Respond to comments on your blog, Facebook, and incoming emails.  Sometimes it’s just someone saying “Hey I totally loved your book.”  Take a few seconds to say a simple “Thank you” or “I’m so glad you liked it.”  Remember, if someone approaches you with a negative sniping comment, you don’t need to answer them – this is OK.  You probably shouldn't respond in these cases.  DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

• If you are at a convention or book signing and you meet a reader, take a few minutes to talk to them.  Get to know your audience and you will find yourself inspired to write.  Sometimes these readers have read your story a dozen times and they may have some good advice or constructive criticism that you can use going forward.

• Participate in blogger events.  (Yes, I’m somewhat self-promoting here because I want you all to participate in our features – which you can find right HERE.)  But seriously, blogs get tons of extra hits when an author does a guest post or interview.  If you see a blog looking for participation in a recurring feature they have – jump on it.  Hello!  It’s free marketing for you!  How could you pass that up???   Also, make sure you share the love – if you have a guest post, review, or feature post going up somewhere – link to it on your Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It will only help you and the bloggers will love you for it (I’m speaking from experience here ya know).

When I talk to readers and ask why they like such and such an author so much, one of the most common reasons I hear (besides their writing rocks awesome sauce) is that they love their blog, or they met them at a convention and they were so nice and easy to talk to.  I've even had people tell me they sent an email with a simple question and they got a great response back from the author and they will never forget how special that made them feel.  It only takes a few minutes to make yourself memorable to one person.  And those instances will be talked about – which means people are talking about you and your books – which means…..

come on….

you all know the answer…..

YOU SELL MORE BOOKS.

I'd put that in big blinking letters if I knew how.

So get out there and shine the spotlight on yourself a bit.  Keep people interested and make sure they always have a reason to check up on you when they’re online.  Then, when it is release day – they are already there and waiting for you.

Do you have special ways that you connect with your readers?  We’d love to hear about them.

How to Lose a Reader in 10 Pages or Less: E-Book Formatting

E-books have changed the book world into something entirely new in the past 10 years.  They have allowed authors to publish independently with ease, readers to carry hundreds of books around in their pocket, and (in many cases) lowered the cost of a single book.  These are all amazing and fantastic things, but for an author it does pose a not so small issue.  The audience of book readers hasn’t changed their reading habits.  They are purchasing the same number of books (if not less) than they always have.  This means that an author must work that much harder to lift their book out of the crowd to attract a reader – and once they have one, they really need to keep them.  Because with so many other books and authors to choose from, once you lose a reader you may never see them again.

One of the biggest ways to turn a reader off in an e-book (outside of the story itself), is to present a product that is not visually appealing.  Now, I’m not talking about having a pretty cover or nice pictures scattered throughout.  I’m talking about the way your words look on the virtual page. 

Most authors do not format their e-books themselves, but that does not mean you can wash your hands of the finished product.  This is your baby!  Even if you work with a publisher, it is very important to make sure your baby is going out into the world looking the best it can.  Here are a few of the things to look for (pictures have been created to demonstrate what we are trying to describe and are not actual examples):

Not everyone reads with a white page using the default font and size.  Take your e-book and play with the backgrounds, the fonts, and sizes.  Make sure they all look nice.  In the image below you can see how the formatting has turned small portions of the text from the sepia/parchment background to white. 

It looks like someone took a highlighter to my book before I even had a chance to read it.  It’s very distracting and gives the impression that last minutes changes were added that weren’t worth the time to format properly.  I have played around with books that have this appearance, and on some backgrounds (usually if you turn the page to black), the words completely disappear as the text stays black as well.  Remember, your readers want something that looks complete, not something that looks used or pieced together at the last minute.

Another mistake I have found is the author that uploads a book straight from a word or PDF document into an e-book without going through any formatting process.  At least this is the impression given by what I am looking at.  You get something that looks like this:

The text in this example is incredibly difficult to read.  The sentences are broken up and the spacing between lines appears to be fairly random.  This is not fun to read at all.

While I don’t have a picture of the next example, it is fairly easy to replicate with typing:

Do you find this distracting?  Perhaps a little difficult to read?  Please make sure your text size and font are consistent.  Changes to italics or bold for emphasis are one thing, but random changes are not pretty.

Now I know you can’t constantly format every time you edit or progress with your book – it would be far too expensive.  Just keep in mind that if you are sending a review/ARC copy to someone, and it may not be completely formatted, make sure to let them know!  I generally assume an e-ARC may not be formatted completely, but I can’t speak for everyone.  By telling the reviewer ahead of time, it prepares the reader for these issues, and knowing they may occur ahead of time makes them much easier to read through when we get to them.

As a reviewer, it is also important to let your authors know if you find things like this in a finished copy.  This doesn’t mean writing a scathing review of how bad their formatting job was.  It can be a nicely worded sentence in the review or even a quick email to the author or publisher.  They may not realize their work isn’t formatted correctly.  They may be using a formatter that isn’t doing their job very well, or it could just be an oversight that can be easily corrected.  It’s nice to let them know in a professional manner that you have found a problem in their product.

Readers, please remember that if you are re-formatting a file using programs such as Calibre or sending a PDF through Amazon to your Kindle, the formatting will most likely not transfer correctly and this is through no fault of the author, but an occurrence that often happens when transferring a file this way.

So that is a reviewer’s perspective of e-book formatting.  I would love to see what authors or professional formatters think of the process and how they check their work to make sure it meets their standards.