Newsletter #78 — Author Photo and More
March 15, 2024
Newsletter #78 — Author Photo and More
Author Photo — Writers are always told they must have a professional author photo ready to send out and to post on line. But I, like many indie authors, don't want to pay for a professional author photo unless I must. And so, I read up on how to fake a professional photo. I'm pleased with the result.
NetGalley So Far — As of March 1 Exit Velocity has been available to reviewers on NetGalley. So far the results are less spectacular than I expected, in that not many people are requesting the book, and the overwhelming majority of the ones who are, are social-media reviewers. That is, if they leave reviews at all, they leave them on Goodreads, Amazon, BookBub, and the like. This is not a bad thing: all reviews help sell books.
But I'm really hoping for requests from professional book reviewers and journalists, and also librarians and booksellers. So far, I've not had any requests from such people. Exit Velocity will be available on NetGalley until May 28, so perhaps things will change.
And, the good news is that those requesting the book indicate that they were drawn by the book description (29%) and the book cover (27%). That's very encouraging!
Kirkus Reviews — Here's my first professional-journal review. I sent my book to Kirkus in January, and the review appeared on February 29. I love the headline they gave the review!
Foreign Rights — Exit Velocity is a novel that might sell well in other countries. Not only is science fiction read around the world, but other countries are probably more interested in workers, workers' struggles, and socialism than are people in the US. So I'm sending out letters to a few literary agencies that specialize in foreign rights, to see if one of them might be interested in representing Exit Velocity at the major international book fairs. I hope that one of the agents replies . . . but I suspect my emails will never be answered. However, there are other possible solutions to having my book represented abroad.
KDP Audiobook — A couple of weeks ago I received an invitation from KDP. That's Kindle Direct Publishing, through which I've self-published a dozen or more books in paperback and ebook formats. The offer said that I had been selected to participate in a Beta program in which some of my books could be converted to audiobooks with AI narration.
I wasn't sure this was free, but I did go to my KDP page, where I saw that five of my books were eligible: the three Research Notes, Charlie Chan's Poppa, and She's on First. That's four nonfiction and one fiction. And, the offer was that the books would be converted to audiobooks at no cost to me.
Sales of fiction audiobooks outnumber sales of nonfiction audiobooks, so I thought I would enroll She's on First in the program. The conversion page was very well set up: Amazon did all the work, and there were only a few decisions I was required to make. I had to choose the AI voice that would narrate, and I had to set a price for the audiobook. Amazon would do everything else.
Well, choosing the price was easy. Choosing the voice wasn't. There were six American voices, three female and three male. I didn't like any of these voices . . . but I had to choose one. There were no other options. I chose the voice that I objected to the least.
But, when I listened to the playback, I didn't have to listen to more than one paragraph to grasp that the AI voice problems were huge. The voice did not understand what it was reading — and this lack of comprehension came across loud and clear: the inflection was all wrong. There were editing buttons for me to work with — but to edit an 86,000-word book almost word by word . . . No. Thank. You.
So I declined the offer. But I'm hoping that in a couple of years AI voices will be improved. And then maybe I'll receive the offer again.
Setting— In my March 15 blog I talk about the cover reveal for Exit Velocity.