Author Confessions - The Darker Side of Writing

Over the last few months, I have been gathering information on the ins and outs of the writing industry. Few stones have been left unturned in areas ranging from general writing trends to more hardboiled and controversial subjects such as ‘whether pricing your book at $1.99 is better than $1.98’.

However, very few authors have been willing to talk about their ventures into the darker side of the business. I’m referring to the various shady methods used to promote books (ebook or print, online or offline). Authors are afraid to divulge information about their personal attempts at these schemes, and perhaps rightly so, because this could put a serious dent in their sales once the wider community condemns their actions.

Nevertheless, it’s an interesting subject, and I decided that the best way to explore it was with the help of Internet anonymity.

A while back, I set up an email account and put out a message asking authors to send in their confessions anonymously using puppet email accounts, under the agreement that I would publicly post the most interesting ones.

Please note: This isn’t an invitation to act upon these schemes.

Here are some of these confessions:

Anonymous1 emailed:

forgive me authors for I have sinned - I use my sister’s account to post 1 star reviews on the pages of other authors in my genre

Anonymous2 emailed:

I’ve hacked into the pages of book reviewers and added glowing reviews for my own book. One time I lowered the star rating of one of my rival’s books by 1, teehee

Anonymous3 emailed:

I mailed 1000 bogus letters to people in my neighbourhood, branded with the logo of respected travel companies, telling them that they had won a holiday and could come to the airport to claim it. 5 people actually showed up! At this point I told them that the prize was actually a copy of my latest book, ‘The Wild Holiday’.

Anonymous4 emailed:

yeah this isn’t so much a confession as a plea for you to buy my goddamn book, look just publish this link on your site ok: [link removed]

Anonymous5 emailed:

12 23 24 45 67

I broadcast these numbers on shortwave radio frequency. The sleeper agents know what to do. That’s all you need to know.

Anonymous6 emailed:

One of the perks of working in a nuclear power plant is…nah you know what, trust me people are going to know about my book very soon. :)

Overall, an interesting round of confessions. If you want yours published, please send an email to author.underworld@gmail.com

[Satire-Free Zone] $4.99 for Professional eBook Formatting (ePub and Kindle)

Independent authors can use all the low-cost help they can get, including a basic professional formatting service to get their books ready for uploading to many major outlets. I thought I’d lend a helping hand.

If you need simple, professional formatting for your book (anything up to 25,000 words), I’ve started offering my services for $4.99. I aim to deliver your book as quickly as possible. Depending on my workload, you can even expect to receive your book back within 24 hours.

For this, you receive:

1. Two files:

• Mobi (for the Kindle)

• ePub (for the Barnes & Noble NOOK, Kobo eReader, iPad, Sony Reader, Bookeen Cybook Opus, iRiver Touch, Adobe Digital Editions)

2. An Interactive Table of Contents

3. An embedded cover (if provided), well-formatted headings, text, paragraphs, symbols etc

Sample images of the type of formatting applied to your book (Click on the links): 

Table of Contents 

Title Page 

Chapter Heading and Text 

Contact Page 

To use the service, please visit: http://rasformat.moonfruit.com

3 new ways to lure readers to your ebook

(Light warning: Following these steps might result in a few angry emails and bullets being fired in your direction. Unfortunately, the popular saying “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” only applies to the emails.)

Getting your book sales to take off isn’t easy. Contacting reviewers, hosting giveaways, participating in interviews, going free for a while, building connections on social networks and good old advertising are basic methods used by authors and publishers to give their book a shot at greatness. As with any other product, the results of these efforts vary greatly. You can take two identical author twins, have them write the same story and follow the same marketing plan, but there could still be a large difference in sales.

What's the solution?

There are two schools of thought. One involves authors attempting to manipulate the ‘butterfly effect’ by flying to a different country and killing a butterfly, in the hope that chaos theory sets in and somehow results in more sales for their book. As expected, this has produced mixed results and probably a few hurricanes.

The second, more effective route is to use tactics that are frowned upon in public. Here are three tips, (not) guaranteed to increase your sales figures!

1. Take hostages at a large book signing

Hugely popular ‘Young Adult Author X’ is hosting a book signing at one of the largest bookstores downtown. Hundreds, if not thousands are expected to turn up to grab a signed copy of her highly anticipated epic about the post-apocalyptic love between two vampiric zombies.

This is your opportunity to orchestrate a lucrative hostage situation. Remember to follow the principles of branding, by making sure that the name of your own book appears everywhere during your gun-toting rampage. This could include:

• Wearing custom clothing that advertises your book, instead of a dark criminal outfit
• Forcing ‘Young Adult Author X’ to read the first chapter of your book and give it a glowing review
• Talking to the negotiators at length about your book, and agreeing to release a hostage if the police announce details of your upcoming blog interview to the crowd
• Demanding a million unmarked kindle book sales instead of cash
• Refusing to talk about anything but your book at your eventual trial

You might spend the rest of your life in prison, but we all have to make sacrifices as aspiring authors.

2. Start a gang of innovative pickpockets

Pickpockets in major high street locations usually work by covertly relieving you of your valuables and leaving nothing in return. You can strike a blow for their reputation and increase your book’s readership by changing this model! After you hire and train a gang of such thieves, give them cheap USB flash drives containing a copy of your ebook. Instead of simply robbing their targets, your gang will replace the wallets with these copies of your book.

The downside? Your book’s name might become synonymous with theft and the ensuing rise in crime statistics. It might be worth it if your book is associated with that genre.

3. Lobby for heavy sanctions against nations where your book isn’t selling well

If you have the appropriate connections to get this done, then you’re probably rich and important enough to explore better avenues of promoting your book.

Nevertheless, even if you choose this path and the sanctions don’t go through, you can be sure that your book will at least get extensive media coverage. Most of it will be in the form of angry protestors burning effigies of you, but any publicity is good publicity. Right?

Good luck and let me know how this strategy works out for you! Suggestions and additional methods are always welcome.