On genre

Entangled Earth is a science fiction horror apocalyptic adventure thriller.

There, that was easy wasn’t it? Genre sorted. Except that’s completely useless for categorization, and for telling someone anything about the book. That could describe The Passage or Turbo Kid (both of which are excellent by the way in their own way, buy them immediately).

Amazon have a wide, but also restrictive range of categories that you can place a book in. Entangled Earth currently sits in Science Fiction > Adventure, Science Fiction > Post-Apocalyptic and Science Fiction > Metaphysical & Visionary basically because there was no better place to put it.

Adventure makes sense, it’s one big adventure, and it’s happy alongside Ready Player One and All Systems Red (definitely read All Systems Red, best thing I’ve read this year).

Post-Apocalyptic on the other hand, does it count if the apocalypse is happening during the book? I’m not sure, I mean it’s definitely not The Road!

Metaphysical & Visionary was where I started taking the piss. What do we have in there? I Robot? The Bone Clocks? I didn’t think so either, but with the lack of an Invisible Planet Intersecting With The Earth Due To An Experiment Gone Wrong category it has to do for now until I find something better.

Since Entangled Earth was released I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on various sites with book listings and the only place I see proper, flexible categorization is Listopia in Goodreads, and even there I can’t add Entangled Earth to any of the lists as I’m the author! I might have to rope in some friendly volunteers. Immediately lists like This is the End pop out and maybe even Best Science Fiction With a Female Protagonist.

So what am I trying to say? Genre is nonsense. I didn’t set out to write a science fiction horror apocalyptic adventure thriller. I had an idea for a book and wrote my story. I understand that maybe I’m making life difficult for myself. I’ve read the “I can write one  novel every 2 months and make a fortune by sticking to a formula” stories. That sounds like the least interesting kind of writing process I could imagine. I have a folder full of ideas, most of which are nonsense or would make terrible books, but there might be some gems in there. None of them are remotely like Entangled Earth, and yet in the past few days one has been running round my brain that might actually work as a sequel. Don’t worry, no resurrections, no retcons, and if I do write it it might even not end up being a sequel after all, but you never know. Besides I’m 50000 words into a science fiction post-apocalyptic space adventure about the nature of identity, so let’s get that finished first.

David Lea, clocking off.

Getting the word out

Publicity isn’t easy. Thousands of new eBooks come out every month and poking your head out of that crowd takes effort and a huge amount of luck.

The first major blocker to gaining traction might be a lack of review on Amazon. People use reviews as a gauge of quality, and quite rightly. I’d think twice about buying an unreviewed book. You might think “I know, I’ll get all my friends and family to review it” and this might help in terms of numbers, just a few gushing reviews raises suspicions for many potential buyers. Additionally, I’ve heard, but not seen, that reviews from people in your social circle can be removed by the great Amazon machine.

The best route is honest reviews, but these can be trickier to get as they will generally come from people you don’t know and this is where, at first at least, you might have to go begging. My first step was to start contacting bloggers. This is time-consuming and a lot won’t get back to you. Additionally, many of them have huge wait lists for reviews, but it’s worth it as you’ll generally get a good, in-depth review that’s posted to Amazon, Goodreads, and social media. Based on various sources I’ve pulled together a list of about 200 blog sites that I’m working through to get in touch with. Each one has received an offer of a free copy of Entangled Earth and a KU link in case they want to use that (helpful for page reads!).

So far I’ve had 4 reviews come out of that work, which is a lot better than nothing!

The holy grail is natural reviews from random people who’ve bought the book. This will take a while, and from what I’ve read you might get one review from every 1000 downloads. This is where the KDP free days is helpful. Every 90 days I set the price of Entangled Earth to free for 5 days and, alongside a huge publicity drive on all the “free ebook deals” websites I can find, I see a huge spike in downloads (over 400 on my last weekend). The main aim of this is to get the book in people’s hands and hopefully drive some good word of mouth and eventually reviews.

The long-term goal is to get to 30 and then 50 reviews on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. This is where Entangled Earth will start being promoted naturally by Amazon (apparently). At the time of writing I’m sat at 1 review on Amazon.com and 4 on Amazon.co.uk, so we’re still a way away, but all those blogger e-mails will start to pay off eventually… I hope.

So, in conclusion, if you read a book, give it a quick review on Amazon. It helps massively and I for one would love you even more than I do now.

The first reviews are in!

Entangled Earth is averaging 4.5 stars on Amazon.co.uk right now and doing well on Goodreads. Nothing on Amazon.com yet (sad face) but a few bloggers have reviewed it. Here’s what they had to say:

“‘Entangled Earth’ by David Lea, is an enjoyable and thrilling apocalyptic story. The originality of the premise and the engaging and grounded characters drew me into a story that was compelling, and both exciting and horrific at times.

Physicist Mia Green is in Paris for a conference and whilst she is visiting the Eiffel Tower, the apocalypse seemingly descends upon Paris, destroying the world famous Tower and most of the city with it.

Somehow Mia escapes the destruction, and her only thought is to get back to her husband and son back in England, in the hopes that they are safe. Bruce, the only other survivor from the Eiffel Tower, and Abraham, a professor who knows what happened – it’s a scientific experiment gone horrifically wrong, join her on her journey back home. Along the way they find out that it wasn’t just Paris that was affected but the entire world, and they must try to survive the apocalyptic journey to Cambridge, England and hopefully rectify the situation.

I liked the way the main characters dealt with the obstacles that came their way. And there were certainly plenty of them to get through! It felt like they were very real-world solutions to their problems, with the characters actually having to think about what to do, and then still sometimes getting by with a sliver or two of good luck.

The world building was pretty good too, giving us a believable world of chaos and devastation, thanks to the lab experiment, and seeing how the world is coping with the dire situation. *Spoiler* Not very well!

It’s an apocalyptic sci-fi story that is fast paced and action packed. There are elements of horror, especially at the beginning of the destruction of Paris and the gory deaths, but it’s more of an exciting adventure story as Mia, Bruce and Abraham race against time and try to save the world.

Definitely a good read and one that I enjoyed.” Geeky Nerfherder

“When an experiment goes horribly wrong, three people must escape the devastation and reach the lab in Cambridge in time to save the world.

Physicist Mia Green is in Paris for a conference when invisible, indestructible intrusions from another world start colliding with things, resulting in destruction and gory deaths all round. Apparently this is all the fault of an experiment at her Cambridge lab, so the only hope is to get there (without being killed on the way) and turn things off.

Scientifically, the premise is a bit daft, but it’s carried through with a lot of thoroughness and ingenuity as the heroes navigate all manner of nasty invisible obstacles. The writing is slightly clunky in places, but with few editing errors and very readable. Personally, I could have done with less gore at the start, YMMV. Overall, a good apocalyptic adventure story enlivened by a clever ending.

Expect a lot of gory deaths. Also some sexual references.” Ingenious Cat

“Okay, that gave me serious chills and it had nothing to do with my confusion if this was a sci-fi or horror book. It’s probably the end that caused my hair to rise.

A trip to the Eiffel tower like no other.
Mia watches the Paris pause and crumble as all hell breaks loose. She tries to find her way back to her son while trying to stop the experiment that caused the work to entangle with a parallel universe, only to be entangled her self.

So,  yeah. I confirm that this is just an end of the world book…. That may casually cause the hair at the back of your neck to rise. No big deal… I’m not afraid of a little scare…

…. Serious chills.” Pointy Hat’s Realm