Last week, I had 54 reviews. Not much (I don't promote at all) but had a 95% 5 star rating. Been that way for ages.

This week one (or 2?) of the 5 stars disappeared. A 4 star materialized from 2016, I guess through a time warp. It was not flattering, in fact wrong, but that's another story.

Has anyone else had the reviews come years late?

Hi Folks! I'm sure this question has been asked many times: When should I lower the price of my book before the promo kicks in?

I've done it before with Amazon; usually the day before gives it plenty of time for the price to adjust. This time I am adding iBooks and Nook. Do they take any longer?

Thank you for your time. Cheers! John

I'm not sure that any one word or phrase can project what you're looking for. My two cent suggestion: a sour lemon smile.

My first novel, The Yellow Bar, is an historical novel set in World War Two Manila, Philippines. I wanted it to be totally authentic, so I had to research a lot of material, just like all the other writers above. This was especially hard, as I was living in Indonesia at the time and didn't have access to libraries and bookstores. So I did net searches. It wasn't easy and took a lot of time, but it worked. Most of the stuff I was looking for was NEVER on the first page of a Google search. So you have to dig deep.

I think one of the main hurdles of writing an Historical Novel is putting your mind in the same timeline. I did mine in several ways:

I searched and copied pictures of people, fashion and places from Manila in the 30s and 40s. I'd look at them all the time.
I read old newspapers on-line.
I played 1940s swing music while I wrote. (My old apple itunes actually had a swing radio station. It was so cool!)
I downloaded and printed a 1940s map of Manila, which I kept taped over my computer. I tried to imagine what it looked like, and where my characters were.

In other words, I put my self there. It made my words flow. It was a very happy time writing.

Thanks for sharing Michael! I am doing basically the same strategy as yours starting August 28. Hope to have the same luck as you. Cheers!

(I did not even try with Bookbub. Just as I was getting ready to pay $400 for an Historical Fiction catagory, they raised it to $500. Blah.)

I’ve written a short story about two southern boys who create their own firecracker in 1973. Hilarity ensues.

It is only about 6K in length. Have no idea what to do with it. Should I:

Submit it as a Kindle short?
Put it up for free on my blog?
Send it to the local newspaper?
Join other authors to publish in a short story anthology?
Make photocopies and pass it to strangers from a street corner?

Any suggestions (or links) would be appreciated. Cheers!

That answers my question. Thank you Steven!

Well, I followed the herd and used BK Fiverr for my free promo for today and tomorrow. Have given away 176 copies by noon, so I'm happy.

I come here for the valuable information. Plus the majority of the authors here are nice and very helpful. Before I knew of the Authors Corner, I spent time on the Amazon authors site. Man... that place was a snake pit!

Whoa! Thanks for all the input, you wonderful guys and gals!

I couldn't resist. Went to the key words and changed two: Took out the words "Japanese" and "World War Two" and replaced them with "coming of age" and "WWII".

I know that I may will lose some ranking but maybe that little fix can help the search engines.

If my sell-rate drops like a t**d, you can all learn from my mistakes. Ain't Writers Corner great?!

Cheers! John, future Rocket Scientist

It's kinda scary and cool at the same time.

All of our books will out-live us. Consider them gifts to the world.

Cheers!

John

I like the bottom ones with the numbers the best. My only critique is that I can't read the quotes at the top. I followed a link to Amazon and it looked great. I assume this is thriller sci-fi? Cheers! John