How EBook Readers Shop And The Importance Of Sampling

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• Good advice and an interesting account on how you shop for ebooks. I like knowing the way you organise your collections. The sampling system sounds very effective ... all useful knowledge. I am just now organising a manuscript to publish it.

  However, your end comment "If fiction, your chapters don’t really add anything so aren’t so necessary." I found a bit arrogant. I submit that the usefulness of chapter headings, and indeed the structuring of a story by way of chapters, depends on the reader.

  Perhaps you ignore their possibilities both in your reading and writing, but I don't. And really ourselves is all we can talk about when it comes to opinion.

  • Hi Rita, Thanks for your comment.
    My point is that in a sample, a fiction table of contents doesn't usually provide anything that will help the customer make a decision to buy, versus for a non-fiction book where customers want to see what else is there. The more important thing in fiction is hooking the reader into the story. I'm not saying that a TOC or chapters aren't necessary in fiction, only that in a sample, they may take away from the word count available.

    and yes, this site is entirely my opinion - that's what blogs are :)

  • Most samples include the chapters, Rita, but when you open it, the sample generally defaults to the introduction paragraph. It's not arrogant to suggest that the chapters don't add value in the sample; most of us look at the writing first, not the chapter structure. If the first thing that your reader sees are your chapters, then you might potentially lose out on a sale, not the other way around. I want to know if I should buy this book; a list of chapters is not going to help my decision much.

  • As a reader, I hate downloading samples where the bulk of the sample are the TOC, blurbs, or other front matter material. If I don't find the sample useful, I'm not spending money on the rest of the book unless the author is on my regular reading list.

    I used to be a serial finisher. This means once I start a book, about 99% of the time I finish them because it used to be more difficult to get books. Now with my Kindle, the author has until the end of Chapter 1 (and my reader friends think that is too generous) to hook me. With instant access to millions of books, there is always something else to read.

    My reading budget was about $40/month when I was purchasing them on at my local B&N. Do you know how many books I can get for that same amount with my eReader? The investment now is my time. And it's the same way with my friends. The author is asking us to give up at least 5-10 hours of our life. If we don't like what we sample, why would we chose to make that time investment?

• I know that some authors (Orson Scott Card off the top of my head) argue that a prologue is unnecessary in almost every book. However, could your tip to "Get into the meat as soon as possible," and create a sample the reader would want to buy, be a situation where a prologue might be useful? As a fledgling author, the use of a prologue is something I have been in turmoil over. Any insight you might have about this would be greatly appreciated.

  • Hi Michael, I'm a sucker for Prologues and it is quite common in the thriller genre - I like them and I write them :) But they are short and there's a usually a murder in them and so it hooks the reader in right away. But it's a personal choice, as a writer and a reader.

    • I 100% agree about Prologues in thrillers. I hate it when folks put out the blanket, "Prologues do nothing for the story," statement about all books, because particularly in the thriller genre, I feel that they can really add to a story and are nearly always full of some kind of action.

      • There's a prologue in my thriller.
        And a few adverbs, too.
        ;-) ;-D

• I do the same thing! On my Kindle, I have a collection entitled 'samples'. Currently I have 27 entries in there.

  I don't think a 60-75% no-pass rate is that bad. My no-pass rate is 80%.

  I wrote a post in my blog about books whose sample content was useless . I agree with you. Put the copyright notice, the acknowledgements, and so forth at the back.

  Have read numerous books that suffered from poor formatting. In some cases, the formatting was so bad that it destroyed the book; for examples, McGuffey's Readers.

  • I agree and as above, I see a lot of bad formatting in trad pub books where they clearly haven't tested the file. That's why I think everyone should have a device to test on.

• Pet hates:
  1) When I open the sample and it's a blank page. I have to click to the next page to hit the text. Simple mistake. Irritating effect.
  2) Reams of acknowledgements, but no writing.
  3) If it's a fantasy book, and the map in the sample is so poor you can't make anything out.
  4) When the sample is literally three pages, ha ha.

• Ouch! Three clicks before you decide yay or nay? I usually give myself a chapter or two to 'get into' the story. Are there any readers you'd recommend? I find the whole process confusing and am reading all of my ebooks (unicorn western) on the kindle app for my pc.

  • I love my Kindle Paperwhite - it is the best e-reader I've used and I've had a few. As a hardcore reader, I don't want backlit or heavy so the iPad and other tablets are out.

• Maybe I shouldn't admit to my delete reasons... but here goes. Sometimes I delete a sample simply because there are three pages of Chapter links. If the chapters don't have a name, why on earth link to all of them? (Silly, I know, but you asked!)

  I'll delete a sample if it has an annoying font. One book looked like a typewriter font and I just couldn't stand it.

  I have a very hard time getting into first person, so I'll try a page or two, but if it doesn't blow me away, I delete those.

  If I notice anything I'd like to edit, I often delete that sample too. Sometimes this is on the sentence level, and other times I think the character or storyline can be improved. I don't get a ton of time to read, so I want books that keep me up late and make me think about them the next morning.

  Silly characters. I did just make it through a book where the heroine was 'chirping' when she talked and 'trotting' but my entire household had to hear about it. She was also horribly clumsy and met the hero by knocking him over. It was a good story but it's annoying when you want to slap the heroine! The weird part was, this annoying behavior was mostly in the very beginning, as if the author thought it would hook the reader.

  That's a few reasons I delete samples. I keep reading if I it's great writing and I like the main character(s).

  • In terms of deleting samples (and free ebooks, because I'm just as harsh with them), I agree with all of these except the edit one, which I will normally give five typos/misspellings/bad sentences before I delete it. I also have a few more to add to the list:

    -Bad pacing. If I can't stand the pacing in the sample, I'm going to assume that the author not only doesn't care about the writing enough to read a craft book, but also hasn't read enough period to absorb the basic of storytelling, as many readers do

    -If no character has been named in the first four or five clicks (unless I really get into it). This goes hand in hand with the bad prologues, where the authors is trying to force a sense of mystery. If it works (unlikely),then it works. If not, delete, delete, delete.

    -If there are ads for the author's other books at the beginning of the sample. This says two things to me: one, that the author is only seeing this as a vehicle for advertising and, two, that even they acknowledge that the writing is so bad that no one will read to the end

    • Allowing 5 typos in just a sample is generous! I usually give 3 strikes and then you're out. Pacing is important to me unless I am in a literary mood ...

    • Complete agreement about no characters. If I don't who is your main character within the 1-2 page, then the book is out too.

      Yep, ads bug me. I don't mind it as much at the end of the book.

• I've found my kindle gets overloaded with books, and I have to delete some before I can add new ones. For this reason I seldom download samples. What I do is read a few pages online and decide then and there if I want the book or not.

  • Hi JJ, you know you can 'remove from the device' and that stores your books in the cloud, so you can just get rid of any you have read. That keeps it cleaner :)

• I agree with most of the points above. I don't track what percentage I delete, but it's at least half.

  If the hero and/or heroine isn't likeable, I delete.
  If there are editing errors, I delete.
  If there are factual errors, I delete.
  If, after reading the whole sample, I really don't care what happens next, I delete.
  If it's a romance and the boy hasn't yet met the girl, I delete.
  If it's a mystery/thriller/suspense and there is no mystery/suspense, I delete.
  If the sample is too short to tell me anything about the book, I delete.

  I usually (but don't always) delete when I see head-hopping, info-dumping or telling.

  I'd say the above advice is equally important if you are asking for reviews. I now only accept books for review if I can read the Kindle sample first. If the sample doesn't grab me, I'm not going to be able to write a positive review (and I prefer writing positive ones, even though I will write a critical review if I don't like the book).

  • I'm loving this conversation as it really makes it clear how ruthless we are with our time! This is presumably also how agents and publishing editors cull manuscripts, and I can definitely empathize. Life is too short to read books that we don't enjoy!

    • Iola, that sums it up and I didn't think to mention it: if I'm not interested at the end of the sample, why read more? That's what stops me from reading most books. I try a page or two on Amazon and it's just so-so.

  • I made that mistake once about accepting a review request before sampling the work. The author wanted a review on GoodReads and since I am an inspiring author myself (if it ever happens with all the reading I do), I accepted thinking it would be good karma. My gosh, the writing was so horrible that I was correcting on the first page. By the time I got to the fifth page, I had to tell the person I cannot review the work because of all the typos and the horrible storytelling. I felt so bad about it because it was clear to me that he needed an editor, not a reviewer. Now I want a sample before committing myself for reviews.

• I, too, use the same sampling folders and process. Getting the sample right is so important, and I am often shocked by samples that do just that - a page and a half of chapter names in a fiction sample is simply a waste!
  If you're going to self publish on eBook, you must, must, must have at least one eReader to proof the formatting on - if you can afford it, it would be best to have one of each format you're publishing to, or at least corral friends' eReaders and borrow them when you're publishing.
  I am often asked by self/e-publishers in my twitterverse to read their books, and always download samples (though I don't always tell them I have) and found terrible formatting that they turn out to be unaware of because they'd never looked at them on Kindle. I find there are two responses - 1) professional thanks and a follow up to ask me to check if it's fixed, or 2) an angry, defensive freak out, with all sorts of excuses about how they don't have a spare $100 to just throw around. Unfortunately, the latter is the most common reaction, and also seems to correlate with how high they are on the eBooks-are-convenient-distribution/traditional-publishing-is-a-personal-conspiracy-against-me scale.
  Sure, buying one of each kind of eReader is expensive, but if you're not serious enough about your work, to save up and buy at least one version of the one you hope to make the most money in, then how can you expect readers to take you more seriously than you do yourself?

  • I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets annoyed about this :) and since most authors make the most cash from Amazon, I do think the Kindle is the one to buy - and the cheapest is pretty cheap these days!

• You can test any format on your computer but that doesn't always prove accurate for some reason. It is the upshot of testing on a tablet like the iPad. You can install all of the reader apps and the rendering is much more consistent with the individual devices. A "one device to rule them all" approach!

  Just a thought.

  • I find the Kindle app just doesn't work for testing - and the same with the other apps. Hence testing the .mobi file on an actual Kindle and the ePub on an actual iPad or other ePub device can't really be replicated. But at least the online app is a start - and there's no excuse for that since they are free :)