Importance of Reviews

I just wrote a great big February newsletter filling in subscribers on the importance of Amazon reviews. I figured The Red Menace and Crag Banyon pages would be the best place to find the biggest fans. I'll post this to both pages.

In a nutshell, Amazon reviews make or break a series. You might think that books from your favorite authors will keep going on without your help. They might not. This isn't the old days, with series books clogging the shelves of the corner bookstore. A couple of minutes of your time over on Amazon could mean the difference between life and death for The Red Menace and Crag Banyon. It really is that simple.

If you've read and enjoyed only the most recent books -- A Red Letter Day or Bum Luck -- or just the first books in each series -- Red and Buried or One Horse Open Slay -- it doesn't matter. Review one book, review them all. Obviously I'd prefer all, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. I need your help, folks, and so do Podge Becket & Dr. Wainwright and Banyon, Mannix, Doris and all the rest. If you wait, you'll forget, do it now. Thanks in advance.

Amazon

I posted this as a reply in another thread, but I thought it deserved its own thread. It's a continuation of my gripe yesterday about Amazon's practice of selling used copies of new books at a fraction of the new book's cover price. I figure more eyes will see it if it has its own thread.

My complaint didn't include folks who are trying to complete collections of out-of-print books that are impossible to find at the local level...for that the Internet is a great tool. What set me off against Amazon again yesterday was seeing that there are already 29 used copies of Red and Buried available at Amazon. Moonstone and I are trying to get something going here, and it's hard enough to launch a series (or even a one-off book) these days without being undercut by people who bought the book, read it, then dumped it back on the market at two bucks less than what we're selling it for within days of the book's release...plus I get not one penny in royalties. This Amazon practice is pure evil and it's directed against struggling writers, as well as the fans who want to see those writers continue writing.

Clearly Amazon is staying in business, but I'm sure this practice has driven some writers on the bubble out of the business. Even McDonald's couldn't afford to stay in business if people were allowed to sell the exact same burgers for thirty percent less in their lobby.

I finally did the math. Seven books in a year and a half. Tons of work, tons of stress, virtually every waking moment -- and many sleeping and sleepless ones -- devoted to one book, then another, then another... No one who isn't a writer can understand what that year and a half was like. Total immersion, barely coming up for air. Not whining, just saying. And, frankly, kind of smug.

All right, enough of that crap. On to the next one.

The Red Letter Day/Destroyer Connection

I mentioned here the other day that my latest Red Menace novel  began as a Destroyer. A bunch of years ago, back when we had to start thinking about a fifth Tor Remo, I came up with the idea to introduce a new Destroyer supervillain in a novella in an Assassin's Handbook 3. It was a flashback story that took place immediately after the events of one of the 1970s Destroyers, and the supervillain wasn't really in it...he had his hand in the events of the story, but only appeared at the very end. My plan was that Warren could release AH3 as an ebook at the same time the fifth Tor Destroyer was released, and that the supervillain only hinted at in AH3 would be featured prominently in the Tor book. None of that happened, obviously. It was too good an idea to let die, so I dusted it off when it came time to do The Red Menace #4. I had to toss out pretty much everything except the skeleton of the original Destroyer story; I hadn't realized how different The Red Menace was from The Destroyer until I tried banging the square peg into the round hole. Many of the same original story beats are still there, but I think only two or three scenes survived, and those were heavily rewritten. But I was able to take the idea of the supervillain who was to appear in the fifth Tor Destroyer, who never existed as more than a kernel of an idea in my head, and include him.

And now, as Paul Harvey said, you know -- more or less -- the rest of the story.

Author Biz

I've got to do a new Facebook picture in one of those wonderfully pretentious, unsmiling, humorless "serious author" poses I see others do. It's just hard to work the camera with my head jammed that far up my rear end.

It's a good thing everyone who thinks he's a writer just because he's got a keyboard doesn't also think he's a surgeon just because he owns a set of steak knives.

Red Menace news

I just now finished the rewrite of The Red Menace #4, A Red Letter Day. Assuming the Morlocks aren't high on paint thinner and rolling flaming coconuts from the mouths of their caves (again), they will definitely have it ready as an ebook well before Moonstone's Red Menace #1 hits bookstores near you.

Reviews Matter

Thanks to some recent reviewers of my books:

Vernon Petersen, on Royal Flush (Banyon Mysteries #3)

 I really enjoyed the humor used in this book. It was silly, corny, and at the same time very creative. I actually read certain lines to my wife 'cause they were too good to keep to myself...

J. Buckley, on Red the Riot Act (Red Menace #3)

With each book in this series, Mullaney seems to sharpen his portrayal of the main characters, while simultaneously teasing us with just enough back story to keep us wondering... There's also plenty of the trademark humor and satire...

 Uncle Fud, on Drowning in Red Ink (Red Menace #2)

[Drowning in Red Ink is] a high-velocity, slam-bang, all-out, full-throttle action adventure with enough superhero derring-do to satisfy the most demanding adrenaline junkie.

Amazon Reviews

It always puzzles me when I read an Amazon review in which someone raves over the content of a book they absolutely adore just before turning around and giving it a lousy review because the mailman left it out in the slush or it arrived from the third-party seller smelling like dead squirrels and pee. It's the content not the condition of the book you're supposed to be reviewing. The fact that UPS tossed it up on your roof and it got pecked apart by crows doesn't rate 1-star. Luckily this didn't happen to me, but it still bugs me every time I see it happen to other writers.

Royal Flush (the Crag Banyon Mysteries #3)

Available now on Amazon Kindle

Reviews

Thanks to "doctorwholittle," Jamie Ashby, for his great Amazon review of The Red Menace #2, Drowning In Red Ink. Thanks to George R. Johnson for his equally great Amazon review of Devil May Care, P.I. Crag Banyon's second adventure. And a final special thanks to "Tractor45" for getting the review ball rolling with the very first Amazon review of my brand-new Red Menace #3, Red the Riot Act.

These things matter. I appreciate them. I mean, I'm not weeping tears of joy like Sally Field or anything, but I DO appreciate them.

Book news

The release of Red Menace 3: Red the Riot Act was delayed mostly because I got distracted working on Crag Banyon #3. The good news is that Menace 3 should be out this weekend, and that I'm nearly finished writing Banyon 3, so about a month from now Banyon will be back.  Before things go nuts for the Menace, a little plug for Banyon.  If you've read Devil May Care and enjoyed it, a positive Amazon review would help in a lot of ways. If you haven't read it, I'm shocked and appalled.  Available now in Kindle and paperback.

One Horse Open Slay

The paperback, for non-ebooking dinosaurs like me.

The biggest rule with a Crag Banyon book is that a joke -- no matter how dumb it is -- that makes me laugh out loud stays in. (Yeah, I laugh at my own jokes. SOMEBODY's got to.)

Thanks for the review

Thanks to J. Buckley for his terrific Amazon review of One Horse Open Slay (A Crag Banyon Mystery). Positive reviews help for a host of reasons, and it's always gratifying -- particularly with the oddball Banyon books -- when folks get the joke. Great review, and if you've not yet entered Crag Banyon's world, what's keeping you? Hey, it's better than this one.

 One Horse Open Slay

 

The Red Menace #3, Red the Riot Act. Finished.

On Reviews

"The prominence of a book on Amazon.com is determined primarily by two factors: how well the book has sold and how positive its reviews are. More highly rated books are displayed more prominently, which leads to more sales. Increased sales leads to even more prominent display, which leads to still more sales. Through the miracle of the positive review snowball effect, a few hundred rave reviews can transform an otherwise unremarkable book into a worldwide bestseller."

The Real Reason What John Locke Did is So Appalling

 

Preview: Red the Riot Act (Red Menace #3)

From chapter 6:

       Podge and Wainwright took the stairs to the seventh floor.  The hallways were piled with trash and stunk of urine, the recipients of society's munificence having reasoned that the best way to get an even better free apartment was to piss all over the one they had now.

Thanks...

...to Amazon reviewer Tractor45 for his great, kind review of Devil May Care (A Crag Banyon Mystery). I've said many times that these positive reviews matter, but I just learned of yet another reason why that's true. So if you've enjoyed any of my books but never got around to reviewing them, now's the time. All the cool kids are doing it.

Amazon apparently has a computer program that pulls short, one-sentence quotes from reader reviews and pastes them up above all the reviews. Like reviewer pull-quotes on movie posters, these give shoppers a shorthand idea of what people are saying about a product. But it appears as if the program doesn't kick in until five reviews are up, so Drowning In Red Ink needs three more reviews to get the pull-quote program to activate.

Drowning in Red Ink (Red Menace #2) 

The Red Menace #3, Red the Riot Act

The Red Menace #3, Red the Riot Act tagline:

The Red Menace and Dr. Wainwright confront a California cult creating mob madness in the Golden State!