We’ve been getting a lot of email lately from new and aspiring authors about what they should do when they go to publish their books.  Many of them tell us they’ve read our blog and are terrified.  So, Athena decided that we should put together some recommendations for new authors.  We put our heads together and came up with the following.  If our readers have valuable information/opinions/experience to add, please feel free to leave a comment.

 

Guideline #1:  Don’t be afraid to publish your books.  If you follow certain guidelines, trolls can be avoided.

Guideline #2:  Stay off of Goodreads, BookLikes, and Leafmarks.  Also stay off of kindle boards, the Amazon fora and Absolute Write.  These are all breeding grounds for trolls.

We have all the known trolls listed on our site: on our Badly Behaving Goodreaders, Badly Behaving Booklikers, and Amazon Fora Trolls page.  We recommend to also be wary of anyone who is friends with these people.  Birds of a feather tend to flock together.

Guideline #3:  Don’t do giveaways on GR.  That attracts trolls.  Trolls like free things and they are usually the harshest and many times the most unfair critics.  For example, take a look at this screenshot where a troll says: “It was free and I’ve heard bad things.  I’m so excited!”  This particular troll was trying to get her friends to do a buddy read so they could trash a book they got for free.  (Note: not all free-e-book readers are trolls, but many of them are.)  You won’t be able to keep people from putting your books up on GR unless you hire an attorney, but let them be paying customers who want to read your book, not people who are reading it just because they got it for free — that usually doesn’t end well.

Guideline #4:  Putting your books up on Amazon is fine — you want all the exposure you can get for your books.  But don’t join KDP Select or make your books free on Amazon, unless you have a series and want to make the first book free.  We’ve seen authors do this and it works well in getting readers interested in the story.  It also helps the reader in that if the reader doesn’t like the story, then he/she hasn’t wasted any money.  But again, remember, this still runs the risk of attracting trolls to the first book.

Guideline #5:  Make sure you put your books up on all the online bookstores for maximum exposure: Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords (use their premium catalog to distribute your books to other sites), and B&N.  Smashwords is great.  You can use Smashwords to make a first book in a series free by price-matching on Amazon.

Guideline #6:  NEVER respond negatively to a book review of your own book (author-bashing reviews are different, those you will want to flag for abuse).  Responding positively to a book review of your book is fine, such as thanking the reviewer.  If a reviewer makes a factual mistake, feel free to politely point it out ONLY if the reviewer is comfortable with it.  Ask them.

Guideline #7:  Keep in mind that no matter what you do to avoid trolls, some may slip through the net and review your book (on Amazon or on their blogs).  Trolls tend to pirate books, but if you follow certain steps and are careful with your manuscripts, you can minimize this.  Also keep in mind that on Goodreads, the GR trolls will rate and review your book even if they haven’t read it or before it’s even been published.  GR is famous for one-star flybys, so don’t panic if you see that.  Many people already know that GR ratings are not reliable for this reason.

Guideline #8:  Don’t panic if you get a bad review.  This happens and not all bad reviews are from trolls.  Bad reviews can actually help you.  First, they weed out anyone who is like-minded with the reviewer who left the review in the first place.  So, he/she usually won’t buy it and leave another bad review (unless he/she is a troll who relishes in hatred, but if you don’t make your book free, more than likely the troll will skip your book.)  Second, one or two bad reviews are a sign that your book is legit.  Book buyers are wary of books that have all glowing reviews.  If they see a book with a normal distribution of reviews ranging from 1 through 5 stars, with the distribution skewed toward the five stars, they will feel like the book is safe and worth buying.

Guideline #9:  In the event that you are the victim of a bully troll attack, and it can happen through no fault of your own, DO NOT panic.  DO NOT engage with the trolls.  Let the storm blow over and the trolls will move on to the next thing they can hate on.  They will forget all about you.  We’ve seen this over and over again.  They thrive on drama and hatred.  One of our readers compared them to the Black Wind of WoT.  This is a good comparison.  They will think that they are killing your career, but that is impossible.  Nothing can kill your career but you.  The only thing that can kill your career is if you stop writing.  So keep writing!  Never stop.

Guideline #10:  Use other social networking sites (other than GR) to promote yourself and your work: Facebook, Twitter, your blog, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, etc., but don’t spam people.  Don’t go overboard on promotion.  Use these platforms to meet people who have similar interests as you and occasionally mention events about your novels: release dates, blog tours, excerpts, promotional contests, etc.  For example, take a look at how .  He’s a great guy and has been very successful.  He also handles trolls very well.  He was attacked by them for something really petty and because he ignored them, they went away.

Guideline #11:  Be very careful what you write on your social networking sites.  Don’t write anything negative about reviews or reviewers.  Don’t call anyone a derogatory name (example: what happened to Hugh Howey.)  The trolls go looking for this stuff.  They stalk authors and wait for them to say something on these topics just so they can pounce and attack (see Bully MO).  Don’t be a victim of this.

Guideline #12:  As for promoting your work, we’ve heard good things about Premier Virtual Author Book ToursWorld Literary Cafe, Bookrooster.com, Microcerpt, and Bookbub.  We’ve heard that these are all troll-free.  There are more and we are currently researching them.  If our readers have recommendations, feel free to leave a comment.

Guideline #13:  Always remember that readers are good people.  Trolls are not.

 

Please pass the word around quietly about this.  The more authors that know this, the more we can save from bully troll attacks.

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