I really wanted to post this yesterday, but I had already done a post. I was so upset, I just went ahead and wrote the post and scheduled it for today. You guys know me. I’m such an easy going person. Very forgiving, very calm. Most of the time. But there are some things that just get under my skin, and the author of a book I just read really ticked me off.
Here’s what happened. I was reading a historical romance. (I won’t call the author out in public, because I don’t think that’s cool.) I’ve been reading this romance on my iPad while walking on the treadmill. It was really a nice little book. I always check my percentages and locations, and this was a fairly long book. I thought. It was getting close to the point where some things were going to be resolved, and I was far less than halfway through the book, so I was wondering what intriguing things were going to happen to prolong the story. I couldn’t figure out what the author had planned, but I figured it must be good to last through more than half the book. Was the heroine going to be kidnapped? Was someone going to get hurt and have to fight for their life? Were the heroine and hero going to have another conflict (there were many already) and was she going to leave and he have to find her? Oh, the possibilities! Then I got to 39% and suddenly they loved each other and lived happily ever after. What? Something was going on here! I had 61% more book to read, so what happened? Then I started skimming through the next pages. Excerpts! Reviews! Book covers! Oh my! First I was bewildered, then I was mad. This author had basically fooled readers into thinking the book was longer than it was. Now I’m perfectly fine with a few pages of this But 61%? Really? Needless to say, I’ll never read another word this author writes. Never. I don’t care if her books end up on the best seller lists and people rave about them (which I doubt will happen). I’m done. Authors…please don’t do this. Maybe do an excerpt of one or two of your books. List the rest as links on one page. Don’t take half the book to advertise your other stuff. Don’t lie to me. Don’t make me think you’re giving me more than you are. It’s very deceiving. You could lose a lot of readers this way. /End of rant
Note: I went to the Amazon page of this book, and there were a bunch of upset readers. I noticed there was now a note at the end of the description stating “Please note this ebook also contains several multi-chapter previews of medieval romance novels written by (author’s name)”.
lauralynnelliott.com 
I think I read that book! Unless there’s two. Either way, I know where she was going with that, it was a loss leader used to market other books, but to me, it was a bit excessive. I haven’t checked my locations and percentages recently with my story to marketing ratio, but I think I probably hover in the mid-to-upper 90s.
What I don’t understand about when that happens is why put in book covers for the next books? Short 3-sentence blurbs should be enough to gain interest, I’d think. Same with reviews, I don’t understand that, either.
Sorry it made you mad though!
I think 90% or so is very acceptable. And it didn’t help that the story ended abruptly. There was no way that I thought the last scene WAS the last scene. Until I saw “the end”. And, yes, there were pages of JUST book covers.
Honestly, I almost deleted this post. I’m not one to stir up things, but I was just so upset about this book. I liked it up until the abrupt ending. I certainly didn’t read the excerpts after feeling like I was duped, so she defeated her purpose. I bet almost no one read the excerpts.
This was part of the problem I had with my first book.
Whereas now we know that readers don’t like a lot of back matter material for just the reason you describe, when the Kindle revolution was just getting started, the prevailing “wisdom” was that you weren’t paying to print the pages, so it just made sense to use the space for promotion. I carried long excerpts from two authors with similar books and another page with references to books from two friends whose genres didn’t match closely enough for excerpts.
Now, combine all this back matter (which certainly wasn’t 60% but it was a lot) with the fact that I had written a short novel (described as such with a word count on the sales page). And then, as a new novelist, I followed my personal preference for getting out of the story while the glow of the climax was still fresh, without moving to another setting for the denouement. I just went right into my kiss, the warm fuzzy, the main character’s conclusions about what she learned, my ending punchline. All the elements were there, it felt resolved to me, and I thought I was all good.
But man, did it piss people off. The expectation of starting a new scene or a new chapter to do that, combined with the expectation built by having PAGES of book left to go in excerpt material–it made readers really mad at me. It’s was my biggest mistake in that book and accounts for most of the negativity in reviews for that story.
Later I amended the back matter but…I think it’s still longer than it should be. I’ve got a table of contents that clearly lists out excerpts from other books at the end. This is something I pay attention to when I start a book (because I note my progress too), but not everyone does. Since it now also includes material from the second book, reviews have been less angry overall since readers can go right to the next book.
Maybe I’ll change it up again on the next round.
I don’t think it makes sense to put reviews at the end. Putting reviews at the beginning is something publishers do to convince someone who picks up the book and leafs through the first pages to buy the book based on other people’s opinions. Moving that part of the front matter to the end just doesn’t make sense, although i could see why someone would print reviews of OTHER books they wanted to push at the end. I like putting covers of other books in the back matter, so that people can get that cover in their mind’s eye and maybe recognize it later. But it backfired on me with book 2 because it was a big book and those covers added to the file size.
Anyway, I can see how having more than half the book be NOT the book would piss you off. I can also see why the author wanted to do it. I think a promotion like that would probably work better free than something you paid for, and also that it would help to have it in the description and an author’s note you have to read at the beginning–thanks for picking up [title], I hope you’ll enjoy the story of X and Y as they [do stuff they do]. Please note that the story itself makes up 40% of this ebook! The other 60% of the book is made up of excerpt material I’ve hand-selected–books I think you’ll love. I hope you’ll enjoy browsing through these books as much as I enjoyed putting this material together, and find your next favorite read. –or some shit like that.
First of all, I don’t think there was anything wrong with the ending of your first book. It made you want to read the next one. In the case of this author, she ended with a love scene that should have had more substance to it. It was like the author heard the doorbell or phone ring and decided she needed to hurry and finish before answering. LOL. And 61% of a book is WAY too much for promotion. WAY. And the thing is, I was so mad that there was no way I was going to read any of the excerpts. And judging by what other readers said in the reviews, I don’t think many of them read the excerpts either. So she defeated her whole purpose of putting all that in there. And I never read reviews that are within a book. For starters, if the review is for that particular book, I already have it, so why would I care? Especially since the reviews were in the back, so I couldn’t have seen them when reading a sample. I actually had an excerpt in the back of one of my novellas, and I wonder what percentage that took up. Not half the book, though. That was my biggest beef. There was a LOT more promotion than actual story. It was like one big advertisement.
I think we learn what’s acceptable and what’s not as we go along. But these days, I think an author would know better than to do this. The story to promotion ratio was just…unacceptable to me.
That sucks. I’d be worried if I was the author that the readers would never come back for a second book.
An excerpt at the back is fine but that’s it!
Emma, there were several readers who said in the reviews that they would NOT come back for a second book. I have no problem with excerpts in the back, I know I have one in at least one of my novellas. But 61%? That’s over the top.
I can only think of one book that did something similar, and it was a traditionally published book by a well-known Regency author we see in the grocery store. LOL (This was a book my friend won and wasn’t interested in reading, so I didn’t pay for it. I would not have paid for it since it was mostly ads.) I picked up the book because it struck me as something that would be good research for that time period. It was about 400 pages, but 200 of those were the actual book (with 70 of those pages being a short story leading up to the actual story). The others were book covers and long samples of the other stuff she’s done. It was crazy. I turned to my friend and asked, “Why would a publisher do this? Don’t they know how disappointed people are going to be when they’re expecting a longer story?”
I don’t want to pick up anything else by that author either. It also makes me question the publisher. I think the publisher did it so they could charge a certain amount for the book.
I can’t believe a publisher did that! But, like you said, it made the book longer, so they could charge more.
In the case of the book I read, I think it’s listed as free right now, and the regular price is only .99. That wasn’t the point for me. The point was, it built me up for a longer story, and then it ended abruptly. Then there were all those excerpts, book covers, reviews, etc. I was just stunned. I wanted to know more about the hero and heroine, but it ended so quickly I felt like I fell off a cliff instead of turning a curve. (I know, that’s a weird way to explain it.) If the percentage on my Kindle had shown it was almost over, at least I would have been prepared for it to end. But I was looking for more story.
I have had that happen with several books. It is very frustrating and I feel like I am paying for ads over the author’s story.
Hi, Martha. This is the first time I’ve had this happen where so MUCH of the book is promo. It is like paying for ads instead of the story. It’s not fair to the reader. I think putting an excerpt from another book is okay if you don’t take up too much space. But it’s a shame a book has to look like one big advertisement.
I’m glad that hasn’t happened to me. That would also turn me off from ever picking up another work by the author, or publishing company if that were the case. Hmmmm, I better go take out all those adds from my next novel 😉
Get those ads out, Chris! 🙂 Seriously, a little promo is okay. I get that. But 61%? I DON’T get that.
I like previews of other books, I have found great stories and authors that way. Like you said it is frustrating to think you are getting a longer novel only to find it isn’t.