Dealing with Book Reviews

I said I would write about some experiences with book reviews, so here goes. At the moment I'm talking exclusively about reviews on Amazon.com. It's not clear to me how much effect those reviews have on prospective readers of books. I would think it's a safe bet that it depends on various factors, including what kind of book is involved, why someone would be buying it, how many reviews are on Amazon, etc. For example, if there are hundreds of reviews, there are likely to be some five-star and some one-star reviews, so the reader won't be swamped with any single opinion. And, if it's the only book available on a particular subject, a reader may decide to ignore negative reviews on the chance that the reviewer was overly critical.

In my case, I'm dealing with reviews of only one book at present, Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4; my second book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, has no reviews on Amazon right now. Well, actually it had one review, but that one is gone. I'll talk about that review in a minute.

I'm going to talk first about a recent review of the book about the Leica D-Lux 4. That was a one-star review, in which the reviewer said the book was a complete waste of time; it apparently didn't tell him (her?) anything new, and seemed to be a re-hash of the camera's user's manual. The reviewer had purchased the book for the Kindle, Amazon's e-reader, and had been so displeased that he (she?) got a full refund from Amazon.

Well, that review really bothered me. For one thing, I had worked very hard to dig up good, solid information about the camera that is not covered in the user's manual. I did many hours of experimenting with the camera's various settings and purchased quite a few flash units, adapters, and other accessories to test them with the camera. I covered topics, such as infrared photography, street photography, and others that are not mentioned at all in the user's manual. And the reviewer made a nasty remark about me personally, which did not seem appropriate for a book review.

So, although at first I considered just posting a comment on the review as an opportunity to make some of the above points and state my case, I asked Amazon to remove the review, which they did, within 24 hours of my request. I have found Amazon to be quite responsive in this area; I have now asked for two reviews to be removed, and both were removed quickly. Of course, I don't make that sort of request lightly. As I noted, in the recent review of the Leica D-Lux 4 book, the reviewer made what I took as a personal slur against me. In the other case, a reviewer of the Panasonic Lumix LX3 book stated, completely erroneously, that the book was out of date because it covered version 2.0 of the camera's firmware (internal programming), when the latest version was 2.2. That was not true at all; the book was completely up to date and covered version 2.2. The clincher was that the reviewer said that it was too bad the book was out of date, because he (I assume it was a he) really had wanted to buy this book!  Well, of course, my basis for asking to have the review removed was that the reviewer admitted he had not read (or even seen) the book!  The review was removed promptly.

Since I've gone through this process as a writer of these books, I have become more sensitive to the impact of bad reviews.  Today I saw a one-star review of a book I had just bought, The Wild Side of Photography.  I found the book to be excellent, so I posted a five-star review to counteract the negative effects of that lone, thoughtless review.  In that case, the reviewer was upset because the book, which was translated from the German, included a reference to a German web site for further information about one of the many topics in the book. Well, that may be a glitch, but it certainly doesn't warrant a one-star review of the whole book!

I'll get off my soap box now and get back to work on other things.  I need to write some more books, so I'll turn my efforts in that direction for a while.

The Amazon Connection

Amazon.com is a huge factor in my publishing experience, so I'll talk a little about some aspects of my interaction with Amazon. There are some things not to like about the company, but on the whole my connection to it has been a tremendous benefit.

The main benefit comes from the fact that I can get my books sold through Amazon without jumping through a lot of hoops, using the direct distribution that comes from having the books printed by Lightning Source, Inc. (LSI).  I spoke about that system several months ago, but it's worth repeating -- for self-publishers or small, independent publishers, an excellent way to get your books distributed with a minimum of effort is to sign up with LSI, a print-on-demand company, which prints the books as orders come in from Amazon (and others, such as BN.com, the online arm of Barnes & Noble). All the publisher has to do is sit back and collect the proceeds -- whatever is left over after the printing costs. Of course, there's a good deal of work to do up front. Anyone who is interested in pursuing that option should get copies of Aaron Shepard's two excellent books, Aiming at Amazon and POD [Print on Demand] for Profit.

Once the books are available through Amazon and other online retailers, it's hard not to become somewhat obsessed with tracking their progress. For example, I find myself going on Amazon several  times each day to check my books' sales ranks.  It may be somewhat of a waste of time, but it does give me some idea of how well the books are selling. For example, the newer of the two recent books, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, is starting to catch on somewhat after being available for about a month. It's now available through Amazon.co.uk, the United Kingdom site, as well as Amazon.com, and its sales rank is now sometimes in the five digits, rather than the dreaded six digits. The other book, Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4, continues to sell some copies, though both books are probably nearing the end of their most substantial sales, as the cameras they discuss are being superseded by newer models. (The new Leica model is anticipated, but not announced yet; the new Panasonic model, the Lumix DMC-LX5, has recently started shipping in Canada and the United Kingdom, but not through U.S. dealers quite yet.)

That's all for now.  I need to talk about customer reviews on Amazon; I'll try to get to that topic in the near future.

Slowing Down as the Summer Ends

Well, the summer doesn't officially end for almost a month, but it feels as if it is ending this weekend. My daughter heads back to college tomorrow and school is starting back up for some local kids. Camera guidebooks are not selling too well at the moment, at least not the ones I'm involved with. I'm hoping it's just a late-summer lull as people finish their last week of vacation and get ready for the Labor Day weekend.

I have gotten several things done lately; my new, professionally-designed web site is up and running nicely; it's still at whiteknightpress.com, but now it has a much cleaner look. My new book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, is available there in paperback through links to Amazon.com and camerabooks.com, and the PDF version is also available through my site. The paperback and PDF versions of  Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4 are also available through the site.  The experience of selling the PDF versions has worked out fairly well. This past week I had two or three customers who e-mailed me about having problems downloading the PDF after they had paid for it, but those were quickly resolved. The downloading system, using fastspring.com, has worked very well overall, and fastspring's technical support has been very responsive and helpful.


I have found it interesting to see the locations of the buyers of the PDF versions of the books. Quite a few have been international buyers.  Here are some of the locations for the recent purchasers of the PDFs: besides various U.S. states, I have had buyers from Spain, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Netherlands, Russia, Israel, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Oman, Cyprus, France, Sweden, and Portugal. Sales of the print versions of the books have been tapering off lately, which I suppose is not surprising given that the new version of the Panasonic camera, the Lumix DMC-LX5, has recently started shipping, at least in Canada and the United Kingdom. I have placed an order for one myself, and hope the U.S. shipments will start soon. I do have a tentative plan to write a new book about the LX5, and possibly a new book about the Leica version of that camera, assuming that Leica eventually does produce one, which presumably would be called the Leica D-Lux 5.

Well, that's the update for now. I have also been working on books with David Busch, and the latest one, on the Sony A550 and A500 DSLR models, has recently started selling on Amazon.com and elsewhere. I'll try to do more frequent updates to this blog as things continue to develop.

Lumix LX3 Book is Available on Amazon

A few days ago the print-on-demand paperback edition of my new book, Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3, started showing up as available on Amazon.com.  They have it listed at $24.95, the full retail price. The price may be keeping people from buying it; I believe it has sold about one copy in the five or so days it has been available; as of a few minutes ago its sales rank had dropped into the 800,000 range, which is not too good.  I have listed a copy on Amazon as a 3d-party seller for $19.95, and it hasn't sold either.  Oh, well -- the camera's replacement (the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5)  has been announced, which must be a factor.  Ironically, though, the Leica D-Lux 4 camera seems to have been officially discontinued, though the book about the D-Lux 4 is continuing to sell fairly well.  Neither book has sold any PDFs lately, though.  I have a web designer working on re-designing my home-made site, but the point of that exercise is fading, because no one is buying the books!  Maybe the redesigned site will help.  I'll try to post another update in a few days.

It's Been Quite a While, But I'm Back to Post Once Again

My last post was in January, after Clenise and I had finally ended our home-based printing enterprise and moved on to having Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4 printed by Lightning Source, Inc., a major print-on-demand company. The arrangement with LSI has been fantastic. After an initial waiting period of 3 months, I get paid by direct deposit shortly after the first of the month for the books that were sold three months previously. I have set the back up for sales both by Amazon.com in the US and Amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom. The book sells fairly well in Britain, where amateur photographers are very active and take their hobby quite seriously.

I have just finished an updated and revised version of the book, geared to the Panasonic camera that is almost identical in features and functions to the Leica D-Lux 4.  That book is called Photographer's Guide to the Panasonic Lumix LX3.  Rather ironically, I approved the proof copy of the book yesterday, which happened to be the same day that Panasonic officially announced the replacement model, the Lumix LX5. Well, I knew that was coming, but I still wanted to get the second book done, for those readers who still will be buying and using the existing model for a few more months, I hope.  The new book is updated to cover the features added in the upgrade of the camera's firmware to version 2.2; that updated information also applies to the Leica D-Lux 4.

On another front, after writing the Leica book, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to co-author some other camera guides, with David Busch, who is a very established and well-respected author of numerous guides and other photography books. That has been a great experience, and I hope to be continuing in those endeavors.

Well, I wanted to add this brief update to let people know that I have not totally disappeared. I will try to add more updates from time to time as things progress.

Summing it Up

That title for this post doesn't necessarily mean this will be the last post, but I think it's getting close to that point. I haven't posted in quite a while, largely because I've been working on writing another book -- another camera guide. This time it's not one that I'm going to publish mysefl (let alone print, bind, and ship from home!). One very positive result of the Leica D-Lux 4 book project, and one that was not intended at all at the start, was that I was able to use that book as a sample of my writing, and I ended up getting a contract to write a book about a different camera. I can't discuss the details at this point because of confidentiality provisions in the contract, but it was a great opportunity, though very intense. I've been working just about non-stop in every available hour since Christmas, and finally finished my part (I'm writing with another author) this afternoon -- unless there are changes to be made.

Now I finally have some time to reflect a bit more about our experiences with the Leica D-Lux 4 book. I know Clenise is relieved that the home-based printing aspect is over. I think she and I both enjoyed some parts of that process, because it was exhilarating in a way, but it was really exhausting and stressful, and it was not at all good for her arm, which she used repeatedly to work the binding machine. Now her arm is recovering, and we're both breathing easier.

One point I don't think I made very strongly is that, overall, what turned out to be the system that saved the day for us was the ability to use Lightning Source, the print-on-demand company, to take over, in effect, the whole project. Looking back now, it seems almost miraculous how things have changed.  One day Clenise and I were working ourselves to a frazzle to manufacture and ship the books, and deal with customer-service issues. The next day, once LSI took over, we could sit back and do nothing, if we wanted. I need to do some more work to publicize the book, but other than that, there's not that much to do. LSI gets orders from Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, and quite a few other online booksellers, then prints the books and ships them to those sellers very quickly. Every once in a while I log into my LSI account and find out how many books have sold. As of earlier today, the report said they have sold 165 books so far in January -- not bad for a small self-published book.

If I were to self-publish any more books, I would not hesitate to set them up from the start through LSI, and get them sold through Amazon, et al. It really is a great system. This whole strategey is the subject of a wonderful book by Aaron Shepard called Aiming at Amazon. Aaron is the guru of this method of self-publishing, and he really understands the print-on-demand business and the workings of Amazon in great depth.

The Kindle edition has been available on Amazon for a couple of weeks now, and as of yesterday it had sold about 12 or 13 copies, I think. Those go slowly, but there's no hurry.

I still need to do an update for my whiteknightpress.com web site about the firmware upgrade for the Leica D-Lux 4 camera.  I hope to get to that within the next week or so.

Monitoring the Situation

The atmosphere around the house is very different now that Clenise and I are no longer printing, binding, and shipping books. Not that things are quiet or restful - I have moved on to another book project that turned out to have a very tight deadline, so I've been working pretty steadily since Christmas. The good news, in a way, is that I have to be done with my draft by about January 18, so maybe there will be some breathing room at that point.

In the meantime, I've been monitoring sales of the book about the Leica D-Lux 4. I discovered a way to check on the Lightning Source web site to see how many books have been sold through their print-on-demand operation, and it said that about 215 sold in December, and about 82 in January. That's not bad for this sort of book, in my opinion.  Of course, those are probably the biggest sales times of the years, because of the Christmas holidays, when a good number of people may have gotten the D-Lux 4 camera as a gift and then wanted the book to help them learn how to use it.

There still are not many reviews of the book on Amazon.com.  Yesterday the first somewhat negative review appeared, saying the book is "not very informative"; the reviewer said he was disappointed based on his expectations after reading the earlier reviews.  That's fair; I imagine he is a more advanced user, and wanted more advanced advice. But most readers have reacted favorably; I think more of the people who want camera books are looking for more basic advice. Several of them have left me positive feedback through Amazon Marketplace, because they bought the book directly from me through that channel. I hope some of them may eventually leave reviews on the main Amazon site, where more people will see the reviews.

Today I again suspended my Google AdWords campaign, because, at $25.00 per day, the expense adds up very quickly, and I am not sure how much good it was doing at this point. I'm going to wait and see how sales are affected by stopping that campaign.