I just heard about this on Facebook and I'm so sorry. Harvey made this board very welcoming and easy to use. I'm glad his struggles are over. RIP and my condolences to his loved ones.

I was very sad to hear of this as well. She's been one of my favorite authors since I snuck off to read my mom's copies of her Skye O'Malley series. Her heroines were always great, as were those hot love scenes. She'll be missed.

This was very interesting, thanks to the OP for posting. I've heard "too difficult to read" from one reader before. Hasn't made me change my writing style.

Tested my WIP:

Flesch Reading Ease score: 63.4 (text scale)
Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: standard / average.

Gunning Fog: 9.5 (text scale)
Gunning Fog scored your text: fairly easy to read.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.4
Grade level: Eighth Grade.

The Coleman-Liau Index: 10
Grade level: Tenth Grade

The SMOG Index: 7.7
Grade level: Eighth grade

Automated Readability Index: 8.7
Grade level: 13-15 yrs. old (Eighth and Ninth graders)

Linsear Write Formula : 8.7
Grade level: Ninth Grade.

First in four years where sales completely sucked  . All else was great. February will see me working steadily on finishing the next book in my series. Then I can happily say five down, one more to go.

To the OP

Misery loves company; I've felt like this in the past years as sales plummeted and then as I compared 2014's sales and income to last year's. I'd say as others did; evaluate where you are and think about where you want to be. Not tomorrow or a year from now, but the long view. If you publish more books, at some point you would have had to do this evaluation and perhaps re-invention, because as we've all seen, nothing in this business lasts forever. For every new buyer who discovers your existing thrillers, you have the opportunity with the number of books you have to potentially interest them in buying more. Is it time to pull away from all that or look at things from another approach? Whatever you decide, I wish you the best.

For anyone using Word 2013 on the Surface, do you have a problem with Word's autocorrect? It's great when it works, but more often than not, it changes certain words I use, e.g. Marinid Dynasty became Marinate Dynasty all throughout my manuscript. Is the only solution to specify what the word should be if the program changes it? Never had this problem in earlier versions of Word.

When the idea for my series came to me - Moorish Spain, 1482 - little did I know how few reliable research materials or source documents were around....

So pleased to see someone else writing about Moorish Spain.

Like others, I could lose myself in the research and I think that's key to creating a bygone era - otherwise, it's difficult to write with confidence so that the depictions "feel" real. But as fascinating as all those details are, any writer of historical fiction knows all of it shouldn't be dumped into a story. Since I write about historical figures, I've used my webpages to flesh out all that information; very cathartic.

Lisa, can you do me a favor and take a screen shot of the error message you're seeing and email it to me at [email protected] so I can take a look?  It's quite possible there's a glitch but when I look at your new release I don't see anything odd.  I don't see a copyright error or a "requires modification" error.  Thanks!

Thanks, Mark. I'll forward the email I received now.

Best news I've heard. Thanks, Mark.

Hi Lisa,
Thanks for clarifying.  I think that's an awesome way of going about it.  My co-op was primarily composed of authors of a certain genre, and by the time I had joined, their list of auto-approves was enormous.

What did you think of the experience overall? Was it helpful for getting reviews? any other downsides to the process?

Would we have the ability to swap out one book for another whenever we want, as long as we're paid up for the month?

Shayne, absolutely. The newer titles get the benefit of being on the New Releases list, but over time that effect does dwindle. So I'm encouraging authors with multiple titles to think of enrolling with the ability to swap their titles in a slot.   

Hello,

I'm putting together a NetGalley co-op, The Literary Quilt, for authors across genres seeking reviews. Ideally, I'm aiming to have 25 slots per month. There is a one-time set up fee and then a monthly listing fee that all authors enrolled would share. So far there are eight authors who have claimed 12 slots between them. If you are interested in access to NetGalley through this co-op please message me here or email me at lyarde1175 at gmail dot com.