Authors Give Us Your Previews

We’ve mentioned that we now would like to post online previews of your work along with the written review, so that any readers of the review can not only see what our opinion is, but can check the work for themselves and see whether they agree or disagree. Previews are a fanatastic tool to give the reader a taste for your work and hopefully by the time they finish the preview they’ll be hooked and ready to buy the book so they can find out what happens. This point has been made before, but if a potential reader can walk into a book store and pick your book up off the shelf and thumb through it to find out whether or not it’s their cup of tea, why not allow them the same facility online. Remember, as stated in our Top Ten Lulu Book Boo Boos article, “No preview at all is a No-No!“

Through our POD websites, we should have access to the ability to create a preview, and once again, I recommend that everyone does. I also recommend customizing the preview, because most people who take a look at it don’t care about the blank pages, copyright page, etc. that are a required part of book formatting. Give them a good section of your book to read – one or two chapters. By the way, I find it annoying when someone customizes their preview and starts the preview half way through the book. How can I appropriately meet the characters and learn who they are and understand the psychology of the moment if you just plop me down in the middle of the action. I’m more likely to be confused and not want to read any farther. You may feel like you are sharing the most pivotal section of your work and are trying to use it as the hook to grab a reader’s attention. That’s all well and good, but if truly the case, maybe it should be the beginning of the book.

Leaving my soapbox behind, I’ll get back to how to effectively use previews. I use a preview for my book, Misfit McCabe on both the Lulu site as well as Amazon.com by using the Search Inside feature. These, while working for the sites which host them, were slightly unsatisfactory to me for use with my own websites. I wanted to have a nice graphical presentation so visitors to the site could easily browse the book. About the time I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the previews I had available, I found the BookBuzzr widget. This was exactly what I was looking for. A nice user interface, which has a nice book-like feel to it, that provide me the code to embed it directly on my website, and the best part is that it is free.

How do you get a BookBuzzr widget? Simply go to BookBuzzr and sign up. You will be required to upload your book in PDF format, and can then customize to show as much of your book as you want. Because of its portability, it makes an especially nice addition to the reviews we do, and we hope the utilization of previews along with the reviews increases the exposure for your writing. I hope everyone takes advantage of our offer to post a preview. I’d like to share a few examples of how the reviews look with previews (the previews are found at the end of the review).

Review 82: Natalie’s Good Fortune by Anthony R. Fanning – This is an example of a review with a link to the Lulu preview.
Review 32: Misfit McCabe by LK Gardner-Griffie – I couldn’t resist giving an example of my book with the BookBuzzr widget.
Review 52: Briefs for the Reading Room by Dan Marvin – This uses the BookBuzzr widget for the preview.
Review 70: Along Came a Demon by Linda Welch – Another BookBuzzr example

The above should give you an idea of how the previews work and how they will help provide additional exposure to your writing. So, if your work has already been reviewed and you’d like us to update the review with a preview – send us a link. If your book has not been reviewed and you are contacted to provide the PDF for review consideration, be bold, send us the information for your preferred preview along with the PDF. I do recommend the BookBuzzr widget, but whichever choice you make, please provide a preview.

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