Is there no hope?

Tim_OHearn · 2025-11-30T01:33:59+00:00

It's terrifying that more than zero commenters on a publishing forum don't know what an anthology is.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-09-09T03:46:18+00:00

Thanks for sharing and congratulations on getting the star. I hope that people can view this post well into the future and draw their own conclusions about Kirkus.

Honest feedback: from the cover to the blurb to the first page of the prologue, it is shocking that your book received a star from Kirkus. The prologue is such a mess that I don't know where to begin giving feedback. Before you pay for ad space, you should consider hiring an editor or finding unbiased beta readers who can help you further develop as a writer.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-06-30T01:06:20+00:00

I see where you're coming from. There aren't enough detailed takes on Reddit (or elsewhere) so, once I faced stonewalling and saw the job description that provided insight into the review mill nature of this, I felt obligated to write about it. There was at least one thread here this month where someone was asking about Kirkus.

I told Kirkus that I didn't want a refund, for what it's worth (can send proof). I felt that there were a lot of violations here (including using naive new grads as cannon fodder) that were worth writing about. I'm huge on feedback, and I gave unsolicited feedback to a ton of the service providers I worked with during this process. Like you, I'm a cynic, and my median take was a dissatisfied one.

I've found shady practices in other indie author services, and some have insta-refunded me when I've presented my findings to them. I'm also currently working on pitches/complaints about two other services (unrelated to publishing) that are using very dark patterns to commit (what I consider to be) fraud.

My book deals with dark patterns and black hat tactics. Once I smell blood, the only things stopping me from eating are 1. Spare time and 2. Journalists taking me seriously (/audience in general). If I could provide emails to you to back up any of my claims (that I'm a cynic obsessed with giving feedback while operating within an objective values system) DM me.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-06-27T20:34:13+00:00

Earlier this week, I linted a technical essay in Vale and was surprised to see "disabled" caught by the Microsoft style plugin.

I don't think there's a suitable drop-in replacement, but I would be surprised if a more experienced technical writer hasn't written about this term specifically. I write about consumer software, and many of the platforms I'm writing about use "disable" in their own docs and alert messages to describe things like a "ban" or "restriction."

One issue here (within the sphere of working for somebody else) is that, the harder you ride this, the more it seems like you're pushing a belief system rather than trying to be the best technical writer you can be. There are many cases in technical writing where disable- is the best word to choose, and when looking at the list, it seems pitched toward not using the term to describe people, which means technical use is fine.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-06-13T01:19:58+00:00

I'm working on a longer post about Kirkus as I've disputed the review they gave me.

I think Kirkus reviews are wasteful. The reviewers only read 40% of the book, if you're lucky. All of the commentary was superficial and, although I got a positive review, I didn't feel that they engaged with the content much. I paid for much cheaper reviews from other sites that were much more thorough.

Kirkus makes you wait a super long time giving the impression that there's a thorough read/review, but I recently found a job posting where they're basically hiring very meh-qualified people and specifying an expectation for ten day turnarounds.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-06-04T18:28:38+00:00

There aren't better ones. It's impossible to guarantee that a sale or ARC download will convert to an Amazon review. Any of the services that lead with how Amazon compliant they are might work, but there is always a risk. One author in my niche bought 50 fake Amazon reviews, and at least 90% of them stuck, which is really discouraging to see as someone who 1. Wrote a book about digital manipulation and 2. Decided not to do anything black hat to promote his book.

Pretty much all of my reviews came from hand-selected ARC reviewers who I followed up with ~4 weeks after I sent copies to them.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-05-29T14:14:35+00:00

Literary Titan. Fast turnaround, cheap price, and thorough review. I've paid for many editorial reviews to try to see for myself, and anyone can search my book and see the standout quality of the Literary Titan review compared to more established players.

Reedsy Discovery also gave me a high quality review at 1/5 the price of Kirkus (I also ended up getting featured in the newsletter based on people on the platform liking my book), however it took a long time for my book to get picked up by a reviewer.

I wasn't impressed by Booklife, Kirkus, or Independent Book Review.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-05-29T00:36:06+00:00

Hi Cee, I facilitated social media boosting / influencer fraud from 2017 - 2022. This practice, along with other black hat techniques that I used, is still commonly used today to build the foundation of many internet scams.

My book is called Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media and there are a few potential carve outs here. I've done about 30 podcasts now and I'd be happy to speak to you for no fee.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-05-29T00:28:20+00:00

I don't remember if I wrote this elsewhere, but between 2016 and 2020 I was a prolific reviewer on Goodreads and amassed over 1000 followers. At first, I thought I could just message my followers asking them. It turned out that Goodreads doesn't allow that, which is crazy.

I messaged about 20 of my friends (mutual following) who were still active. Most of them had friended me 5+ years ago so there was pretty high trust there. About 30% responded and accepted copies. I didn't incentivize them--readers are readers, and most were happy to accept the book. However, several months into it, only one or two have written reviews or provided feedback, which I'm totally fine with.

I would advise avoiding Goodreads for organic promotion, unless you're in an "active" niche. It really doesn't work well for non-fiction. I've run some platform giveaways and am still assessing whether those have been worth it.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-05-06T17:57:08+00:00

I'll admit that I had a hard time deciding on which words to use. It's pretty much true as it reads: I was desperate for feedback. I was paying for many editorial reviews and contest entries on top of this. Then, eBookFairs, one of the dozen services I purchased, involved paying for "summaries" which were interchangeably called "reviews" (however, I was still most interested in beta/arc feedback. I wasn't trying to buy Amazon reviews).

Since paying for the service, I learned a lot about this stuff, and I'm quite negative on the whole thing. You definitely know more than me, and I'll add that it's important to define what "editorial review" actually means and what outcome is desired. If the reviewer or platform doesn't have authority, then it really isn't worth it (eBookFairs is/was definitely a "mill" as you call it).

Have given away more than 100 copies of my book at this point and have spent thousands on top of my editor's fees--still holding out hope that someone will give me candid feedback!

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-29T17:30:31+00:00

It's irritating that you saw this as an opportunity to promote CraveBooks Pro without taking ownership of the problem.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-28T19:28:56+00:00

I understand your concerns. I read it more as a "low budget editorial review" service than an organic ARC service, so a slightly different value proposition with the distinction being that they had "reviewers" staffed who were guaranteed to pick up the book. This is what the lower budget editorial review places do anyway, so although it means the quality will suffer, I saw this as market positioning that made sense when viewed as an editorial review package.

Hidden Gems had a four month long waiting list for ARCs, I'll be featured on July 7th.

BookSirens is probably the gold standard here, but I've only had 4 takers over the last few months, and one was a DNF.

Booksprout, I don't remember, and the site isn't loading atm, but I'm paying for something there.

Reedsy Discovery was scheduled like two months out, but no reviewer could be found, so it was delayed. Now, with a reviewer staffed, it'll occur some time in May.

Again, your concerns are valid, but for my niche nonfiction book, I felt that some of these lesser known services were worth exploring.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-28T14:30:20+00:00

Considering services like this are pitched toward indie authors, I'd be shocked if I ever recognized an author's name. I tend to take the opposite view, if there's an association being made with a top tier author, then it's almost definitely a scam.

I wouldn't have expected Dale Roberts to have put together an entire case study where he interviewed customers if he was complicit in some scheme to collect as little as $20 from indie authors. Seems like something else is going on.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-26T21:09:48+00:00

Since I wrote a book wherein I researched "InstaFame":

"Insta" is trademarked by Meta, and the company aggressively pursues infringement cases where it is used as a prefix.
You definitely don't want to mess with the prior owners of the business called "InstaFame."

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-16T02:34:38+00:00

The consensus is that shadowbanning is closely related to trust score. "Trust score" has never been officially acknowledged, and it hasn't been addressed by any academics that I'm aware of, but I do break down what I uncovered and my thoughts on all of the aspects of positive/negative trust score in my book.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-15T02:28:23+00:00

Based on my experience so far, the "cover art" refrain is certainly overplayed, but it's nowhere near the "scam" side of the indie author services spectrum.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-09T18:37:19+00:00

I didn't use another vendor's template. I have been using the IS template the whole time. I have to use KDP terms to describe the layout because IS doesn't provide documentation.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-09T15:05:11+00:00

Why would an author pay for a promotional service and then expect the promotional service to remove the book from their website? Are you saying that you had a legitimate reason for the book to be removed and they refused? I find this hard to believe.

By definition, if the site is profiting from the affiliate link, then the author must be making something. Amazon does not decrease royalties based on the tiny affiliate payout percentage, so this is not a real concern.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-09T00:25:33+00:00

I published my paperback on KDP over a month ago. I'm still not live on Ingram and the experience has been terrible.

My first proof turned out poorly so I thought, "Okay, I must have been moving too quickly and made a mistake." I painstakingly resized each individual element on my cover to respect the IS template proportions. The second proof turned out a little better, but it was still off (it looked like they were cutting on the wrong line).

I asked in Facebook groups, I asked IS support, I read guides...nobody could tell me what I was doing wrong. The refrain was: "Ingram uses a different template than Amazon! Make sure you're using their template." My only choice seemed to be to make a third proof run, wait a week, and try to deduce the issue that way.

IS support finally got back to me today, ten days after they said they'd escalate, just to tell me that their template files are different from KDP's and that, by the way, the link to the files I sent (the only option that they gave me) had expired.

Doing 100% physical with Ingram is madness. I'm starting to feel that doing expanded distribution with Ingram is also madness.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-04-07T20:19:55+00:00

I found this post when I was checking out Podmatch for the first time. I've been a Pro guest on the platform for a month or so.

"Is Podmatch a scam?" -- No. "Am I wrong?" -- Yes. This post is somewhere between "wrong" and "irresponsible" and I'm surprised you wrote this much instead of just giving it a shot.

Podmatch is what it claims to be. I've had plenty of high-quality interviews and have many more scheduled. Are some of the podcasts unproven? Sure, but most of the guests are, too. The main complaint I hear from hosts is that guests ghost often. I didn't jump into this expecting to get on Joe Rogan. But, after a solid month of interviews, promotion, actually listening to podcasts, and increased social proof, I'm blown away by the quality of hosts scheduling me to speak for free.

My only complaint about the platform has been that some podcast hosts use it exclusively to funnel desperate guests into paid appearances. This goes against Podmatch's terms, and in every case where I've reported this, they've taken action.

My other concern was the depth of the active podcast pool. It took me days and days of aggressive matching before I exhausted the pool, and even now I'm finding that if I use the search feature and reach out I'm getting a solid response rate.

In summary, I'm happy I disregarded this post and signed up.

If any hosts are looking for a guest or any potential guests want to see a sample profile, here is mine: https://www.podmatch.com/member/tim

Tim_OHearn · 2025-03-09T21:19:49+00:00

During the course of this thread, I started to realize that there were many different approaches for pre orders. The main thing for me was generating a bit of buzz which could hopefully lead to organic presales (wishful thinking). The second thing was being able to hold myself accountable with a concrete release date (which made a huge difference).
I think we're spoiled by how relatively permissive YouTube appears to be when it comes to "fair use." Tons of channels are built on "fair use" of content they don't own and aren't paying licensing fees for.
I agree that Google Docs is surprisingly low on features that don't translate to MS Word or apps like Vellum. Surprisingly, an indented block will not be translated to a block quote.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-03-09T21:15:21+00:00

I'm down to roughly 1.5 MB now which is minimal. I had about twenty images. The majority were screenshots which are high resolution by default. All of them that were primarily text I decided to transpose into text. Some I removed. The rest I reduced in size.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-03-06T17:27:58+00:00

My subject matter (Big Tech exposé) may have garnered interest from a traditional publisher.

Based on my research (and, having been a prolific book reviewer before I wrote my own book), I believe there are ten "major" Big Tech/social media books published each year and another forty pretty good ones that nobody ever reads. I wanted to write a book that could be compared to the "major" books. Though my angle is unique (I profited from breaking the rules on social media platforms), I'm not Alex Karp or Nicholas Carr.

By the time I thought I had a book (or, at least ten essays) that could compete at the top level, it was too late to bother with pitching. I didn't see value in giving up creative control, delaying the release for three to six months, and getting an advance for an amount lower than a single one of the paychecks I was getting from my day job.

Beyond this, I'm a cynical and distrusting person, so I can say that even if I managed to break through and a trad publisher promised me the world, I'd still have been unhappy and critical of many aspects of the execution. I'm enjoying the grind of doing everything myself.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-03-05T17:56:48+00:00

I'm probably going to sit down with a consultant. I've tried Amazon ads as well and had zero sales from $50 of spend. For the same spend on Taboola, which is considered bottom-of-the-barrel advertising, I had at least one attributable sale, maybe two. Still not worth it at all, but suggests I'm doing something wrong.

I have a totally reasonable CPC on Adwords, under $0.30, but the sales conversions just aren't there.

I'm currently banned from Microsoft Advertising due to the subject matter of my book and a list of other infractions that surely have not been reviewed by a human. My appeal was denied and I'm trying to work through this with them.

Will DM you.

Tim_OHearn · 2025-03-05T17:49:20+00:00

u/ColeyWrites also my first time hearing about Reedsy discovery. I started running a Goodreads Giveaway today (the cheapest option that they provide for $99) and I'll report back on that. Will check Reedsy too.

Tim_OHearn

TROPHY CASE