The previous post was about fake reviews I received for my book, The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn, on Goodreads.

Not good for consumers or companies selling to consumers.

(To their credit, Goodreads investigated, removed the reviews, and closed the account(s) posting them.)

The FTC intends to make it costly for an individual or company posting fake reviews. This includes selling reviews, good or bad, fake or otherwise.

I support the effort, but it remains to be seen how well enforcement will be. And there will be challenges getting legitimate reviews in front of potential customers.

I've had a half dozen people contact me saying they purchased my book online, read it, and posted a review on the site where they made the purchase.

In all those cases, the reviews remain "under review" a week or more after being  posted.

Nonetheless, it's past time to address this issue.

The latter half of the title of this post refers to the dark side of the world we live in today. So many of our politicians spewing such vile garbage (you know who I'm referring to), tells many who hear it, they can do and say the same.

I was aware that there were a large number of fake accounts and reviews for books on GoodReads. I hadn't experienced it personally, but knew many others have. I hadn't experienced it until a few days ago.

I received a message from Gina, a GR author, who noticed I had a half dozen or so 1 star ratings and horrible comments for my just released book. So "just released", I knew they were not people who had read it. Gina did too, and took the time to report it to GR (which is owned by Google.) She's been battling this for over 3 years. 

I reported it as well the next day, and less than 24 hours later received the following response from GR:

"Hi William,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, though we're sorry to hear about your experience. We've looked into the accounts you reported, and as they raised a number of our standard red flags for illegitimacy, they have been removed from the site. We take the responsibility of supporting our members seriously and are constantly investing in making improvements to better safeguard our community. We're happy to continue to investigate any content/accounts you think breaks our guidelines. 

We appreciate that you brought this to our attention. Please let us know if there's anything else we can help you with. 

Sincerely,
The Goodreads Team"

Being honest, based on the lack of response others having the same problem have reported, I did not expect resolution or a reply as quickly as happened. My hope is GR recognizes this is a major problem, one that could cause them to lose both authors and members. That would be a tragedy from the perspective of someone who enjoys interacting with others about books.

The former part of this post title is about the good in today's world. Gina, who took the time to help someone she didn't know, and GR who cleaned up the problem so quickly.

That may seem insignificant with all at stake as we approach our national election, but I'll take it, appreciating anything, small or large, that is about the good.

Everything up to yesterday was about creating The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn, and more recently, getting it ready for sale.

Last night at 12:01 AM, we moved from preparing to sell to selling, and because we did, now the real work begins.

Starting today, I am running one week ad tests on BookBub and Facebook. Both are live now, we'll see what comes of it.

BB is book reader centric. The people who go there do so to find books they want to read. There is a social media aspect to it, but that too focuses on book reading and books.

Facebook has book readers as well, but the overall focus is more generally friends staying in touch with friends. I set up the FB test to reach FB book groups, but my guess is BB will do a better job of that than will FB. 

We'll see.
​

Eight days to The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn is released. Time for an update of my ad plans.

The issue was, and still is, how best to spend my ad money? No surprise; the core issue in all advertising is deciding how much money to spend, where? 

I've researched social media sites including LinkedIn and Facebook, thinking I would try something on both of them.

More recently, I came across book specific sites such as BookBub and LibraryThing, along with GoodReads, all focused on books and people who like to read books.

Book readers don't just want to read any book, they want to read the kinds of books that appeal to them.

Sites specific to books and book readers provide the level of detail required to define a target audience, which is not as true for LI, FB, and other mass social media sites.

As much as I've learned about where to advertise, there is still so much I don't know. So, come October 15, I will start a week trial of ads on Facebook and BookBub, spending more on each than I ever thought I would a few months ago.

I've come this far, there's no turning back. 

But you could. To learn more, spend some time on the Career Authors site.